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Phutographic 

Sciences 

Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER,  NY.  14580 

(716)  872-4503 


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CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions 


Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


1980 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiques 


The  Institute  Has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  dvailable  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


rrT\    Coloured  covers/ 

I  r\    Couverture  de  couleur 


D 
D 
D 


Covers  damaged/ 
Couverture  endommagde 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurde  et/ou  pelliculde 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 


□    Coloured  maps/ 
Cartes  g^ographiques  en  couleur 

□    Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

□    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 
Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 


D 


Bound  with  other  material/ 
Relid  avec  d'autres  documents 


□    Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  reliure  serr^e  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  intdrieure 


D 


D 


Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajoutdes 
lors  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  cela  6tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  dt6  filmdes.  / 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppldmentaires; 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  6t6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
point  de  vue  bibliographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  m6thode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiqu6s  ci-dessous. 

□    Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 

0    Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommag^es 

r — I    Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
I I    Pages  restaurdes  et/ou  pelliculdes 

□    Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 
Pages  ddcolor^es,  tachet6es  ou  piqudes 

□    Pages  detached/ 
Pages  d6tach6es 

0Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

□    Quality  of  print  varies/ 
Quality  indgale  de  I'impression 

□    Includes  supplementary  material/ 
Comprend  du  materiel  supplementaire 


Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponible 

Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  refilmed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ont  6t6  film6es  d  nouveau  de  fapon  d 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  film6  au  taux  de  r6ductlon  indiqud  ci-dessous. 


10X 

14X 

18X 

22X 

26X 

30X 

n/ 

12X 

16X 

20X 

24X 

28X 

32X 

The  copy  filmed  here  has  bnen  reproduced  thanks 
to  the  generosity  of: 

National  Library  of  Canada 


L'exemplaire  film6  fut  reproduit  grdce  d  la 
gdndrositd  de: 

Bibliothdque  nationale  du  Canada 


The  images  appearing  here  ere  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


Original  copies  in  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
o^her  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  — *►  (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  V  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 

Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  aro  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Les  images  suivantes  ont  6t6  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettetd  de  l'exemplaire  filmd,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 

Les  exemplaires  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  imprimde  sont  filmds  en  commenpant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  soit  par  la 
dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  seion  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  filmds  en  commenpant  par  la 
premidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
dernidre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symbole  —^  signifie  "A  SUIVRE",  le 
symbole  V  signifie  "FIN". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  §tre 
film^s  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diff^rents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  gtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  it  est  film6  i  partir 
de  Tangle  sup6rieur  gauche,  de  gauche  h  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  n6cessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
lliustrent  la  mdthode. 


1 

2 

3 

32X 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

%m 


mmmmmmm 


'ONTBNAC  ^ND  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 

•  .1  f ;     '•"  r^  II ;        "  I  •■  I 


A    PAPER 


READ   BEFORE   THE 


New  York   Historical  Society 


Tuesday,  December  ^,  1888, 


BY    THE 


HON.   EDWARD    S.    ISHAIVL 


NEW    YORK: 
PRINTED    FOR   THE   SOCIETY. 

1 889. 


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Fkontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


A    PAPER 


READ  BEFORE  THE 


New  York   Historical  Society 


Tuesday,  December  4,  1888, 


BY   THE 


HON.   EDWARD    S.    ISHAM. 


NEW   YORK: 

PRINTED  FOR  THE  SOCIETY. 

1889. 


At  a  stated  meeting  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  held  in  its 
Hall,  on  Tuesday  Evening,  December  4,  1888  : 

•  The  Hon.  Edward  S.  Isham,  of  Chicago,  read  the  paper  of  the 
evening  entitled  ''Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.''^ 

On  its  conclusion  the  Librarian  submitted  the  following  resolution, 
which  was  adopted  unanimously  : 

Resolved,  That  the  thanks  of  the  Society  be,  and  hereby  are, 
presented  to  the  Hon.  Edward  S.  Isham,  for  his  interesting  and 
valuable  paper,  read  this  evening,  and  that  a  copy  be  requested  for 
publication. 

Extract  from  the  Minutes, 

Andrew  Warner, 

Recording  Secretary. 


Officers  of  the  Society,    1889. 


PRESIDENT, 

JOHN    ALSOP     KING. 

FIRST   VICE-PRESIDENT, 

JOHN     A.    WEEKES. 

SECOND    VICE-PRESIDENT, 

JOHN     S.     KENNEDY. 

FOREIGN   CORRESPONDING  SECRETARY, 

JOHN     BIGELOW. 

DOMESTIC   CORRESPONDING   SECRETARY, 

EDWARD     F  .     D  E     L  A  N  C  E  Y 

RECORDING   SECRETARY, 

ANDREW    WARNER. 

TREASURER, 

ROBERT    SCHELL. 

LIBRARIAN, 

CHARLES     ISHAM. 


EXECUTIVE    COMMITTEE. 


FIRST   CLASS— FOR    ONE    YEAR,    ENDING    189O. 

EDWARD  F.  DE  LANCEY,  VVILLARD  PARKER,  M.D., 

DANIEL   PARISH,  Jr. 

SECOND   CLASS— FOR   TWO   YEARS,    ENDING    189I. 

BENJAMIN    H.  FIELD,  FREDERIC   GALLATIN, 

CHARLES    H.  RUSSELL,  Jr. 

THIRD   CLASS FOR   THREE    YEARS,    ENDING    1S92. 

JOHN   S.  KENNEDY,  GEORGE  VV.  VANDERBILT, 

GEORGE   H.  MOORE,  LL.D. 

FOURTH    CLASS— FOR    FOUR   YEARS,    ENDING    1893. 

JOHN   A.  WEEKES,  FREDERICK   STURGES, 

JOHN   W.  C.  LEVERIDGE. 

JOHN   A.  WEEKES,   Chairman, 
DANIEL   PARISH,  Jr.,  Secretary. 

[The  President,  Recording  Secretary,  Treasurer,  and  Librarian 
are  members,  ex  officio,  of  the  Executive  Committee.] 


COMMITTEE   ON   THE   FINE   ARTS. 


DANIEL   HUNTINGTON, 
ANDREW   WARNER, 
JOHN   A.  WEEKES, 


JACOB   B.  MOORE, 
HENRY   C.   STURGES, 
GEORGE  W.  VANDERBILT. 


DANIEL    HUNTINGTON,  Chairman, 
ANDREW   WARNER,  Secretary. 

[The  President,  Librarian,  and  Chairman  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee are  members,  ex-officio,  of  the  Committee  on  the  Fine  Arts.  ] 


FRONTENAC    AND    MILES    STANDISH    IN 
THE  NORTHWEST. 


One  may  well  seem  challenged  for  his  vindication  who 
presumes  to  revive  in  this  place  discussion  of  the  subject  now 
suggested.  But  any  one  whose  thought  is  engaged  by  that 
region  which  as  a  historical  unit  peculiarly  holds  the  inherit- 
ance of  the  early  New  England  colonization,  will  gladly  find 
there  also  a  revelation  of  the  movement  that,  perhaps,  links 
the  development  of  the  past  with  the  remote  future. 

The  colonial  histories  have  been  said  to  be  important  only 
as  leading  up  to  the  war  of  the  revolution,  and  to  the  estab- 
lishment, by  the  federal  union,  of  independence  and  a  dis- 
tinguished new  member  of  the  family  of  nations.  It  has  been 
said  that  until  then  they  "  do  not  assume  the  importance  and 
value  of  the  history  of  a  nation,"  finding  their  ultimate  service 
in  the  accomplishment  of  that  result.  But  it  has  come  to  be 
seen  that  there  is  a  universal  history,  a  line  of  progressive 
movement  connecting  all  historical  movements  together.  The 
earliest  records  open  with  a  populous  earth,  with  civil  govern- 
ment in  operation,  and  culture  and  civilization  already  in  course 
of  development.  Their  beginning  is  lost,  but  through  ages 
inconceivably  long  there  has  been  produced  an  increa'sing 
heritage  of  principles  of  universal  value  both  in  civil  culture 
and  the  conditions  of  its  security  and  advancement.  To  this 
priceless  and  lengthening  chain  successive  historical  move- 
ments bring  unconsciously  their  contribution,  and  in  relation 
to  it  all  peoples  become  involuntarily  one  progressive  com- 
munity. One  fastens  eagerly  upon  the  links  of  that  chain 
wherever  their  gleam  can  be  caught ;  but  we  are  so  much 
inclined  to  please  ourselves  with  the  radiance  of  some  attain- 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


mcnts  of  our  times,  with  the  apparent  giving  way  of  some 
old  barriers  of  thought,  and  with  an  obvious  amelioration  of 
the  conditions  of  modern  life,  that  wc  perhaps  mistake  a  little 
dawn  for  the  broad  day,  and  fail  to  observe  how  close  behind 
us,  after  all,  and  even  around  us,  are  still  the  gloom  and  the 
shadows  of  the  primal  forest  that  we  think  we  have  emerged 
from,  and  through  which  has  penetrated  that  painful  and  un- 
measurable  way  to,the  opening  of  which  all  historic  races 
have  brought  their  aid.  It  may  be  readily  understood  that 
no  personal  memoirs  are  intended  of  the  renowned  captain 
of  the  Pilgrims  or  of  the  illustrious  governor  of  New  France; 
but  they  signally  typify  two  great  movements,  contemporary 
and  almost  equally  distinguished,  which,  though  very  re- 
mote in  origin,  so  converged  as  to  expend  their  force  in  a 
singular  degree  upon  the  Northwest,  and  by  their  contrasted 
character  and  inherent  tendencies  aid  us  to  get  our  own  bear- 
ings and  bring  us  directly  upon  vital  questions  of  our  own 
time 

v^ne  of  these  movements,  which  was  distinctly  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  seigniorial,  entered  upon  our  continent  through  the 
avenue  of  the  great  St.  Lawrence  River  and  the  Lakes.  The 
qualities  of  poverty  and  discipline,  of  self-sacrifice  and  mar- 
tyrdom, were  glorified  at  Pampeluna  in  the  reveries  of  Loyola, 
and  found  their  exponent  in  that  unique  Society  of  Jesus, 
which  has  been  unequalled  in  the  world  in  the  efficient  devo- 
tion of  its  members  to  their  faith,  and  above  all  things  to 
their  Order,  A  prodigious  opulence  and  power  of  the  Order 
itself,  with  an  unparalleled  arrogance  of  dominion  arose  upon 
poverty  and  personal  humility  in  the  lower  ranks,  through 
matchless  enterprise  and  skill  of  administration.  Its  priests 
were  sent  into  every  accessible  corner  of  the  world.  No 
voyage  of  discovery,  no  tale  of  any  wandering  adventurer 
indicated  the  existence  of  an  unvisited  people,  but  men  went 
instantly  upon  the  work  of  exploration  and  conversion  ;  and 
no  courage  could  surpass  that  of  men  whose  exaltation  of 
spirit  rose  with  the  appearance  of  peril  and  the  chance  of 
suffering  and  death  in  remote  recesses  of  savage  regions  and 
savage  society. 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.  7 

The  civil  society  of  France  was  rooted  in  the  severest 
feudalism  of  Northern  Europe.     Feudalism  throughout  all  its 
gradations  was  an  organization  of  servitude,  mitigated  in  the 
upper  ranks  by  arbitrary  privileges  and  prerogatives,  which 
diminished  as   the    rank   descended,    so  that  the  burden  of 
servitude   accumulated  as  it  fell  from   grade  to  grade,  and 
rested  with  hopeless  and  crushing  oppression  upon  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  at  the  bottom.      We  behold  it  in  a  retro- 
spect giving  origin  to  picturesque  manners  and  architecture, 
and  associated  with  institutions  of  piety  and  charity  ;  and  the 
development  of  chivalry,  the  glory  of  the  Crtsades,  the  hero- 
ism of  famed  men,  and  the  lustre  of  great  events,  unite  to  be- 
.  guile  our  thought  from  the  fact  that  all  that  exists  of  freedom 
and  of  popular  security  in   modern  states  has  been  won  in 
spite  of  feudalism,  and  has  been  rescued  from  the  doom  of 
slavery  to  which  that  institution  consigned  society.     There 
was  no  room  within  it  for  any  principle  of  civil  liberty.     The 
first   condition  of  liberty  was  what  is  now  called  Nihilism. 
Every  step  gained  was  an  annihilation  pro  tanto  of  some  feu- 
dal element.     The  doctrines  which  live  in  our  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
were  also  the  first  flowers  that  blossomed  at  the  foot  of  the 
French  guillotine.     In  the  times  of  Francis  I.  and  Henry  IV. 
the  privilege  and  prerogative  of  the  twelve  peers  who  stood 
around  the  throne  of  Hugh  Capet  were  shared  among  two 
hundred  grand  seigniors  who  had  succeeded  them.     These 
represented  the  landed  estates,  the  great  titles,  the  ostentation 
and  arrogance  and  splendor  of  living,  and  the  social  and  po- 
litical power  which  supported  the  monarchy.     They  were  the 
class  whose  power  was  broken  by  Richelieu  to  build  the  ab- 
solutism of  Louis  XIV.     Outlying  these  was  a  large  body  of 
the  nobility,  and  a  greater  multitude  of  gentlemen,  noble  by 
caste   but  untitled,  touchy  and  proud,  penniless  but  ambi- 
tious, hunting  for  pocket-money  and  for  fortune,  full  of  the 
spirit  of  adventure,  infinitely  expert  with  their  rapiers,  and 
ready  to  sell  them  to  the  service  of  any  superior  nobleman 
who  would  employ  and  pay  for  them.     Their  gentility   of 
birth  excluded  them  by   law  from  ordinary  occupations  of 


v.ii^^WWflUIl-llll 


sooaaii^ni 


8 


Frontcnac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


trade  and  commerce,  but  they  hovered  abput  the  splendors 
of  the  Louvre,  and  the  later  ones  of  Versailles,  and  formed 
the  retinues  of  the  great  nobles.  Below  these  lay  the  trading 
and  artisan  people  of  the  cities  and  large  towns,  and  the 
hopeless  subjection  of  the  country  peasantry.  This  was,  how- 
ever, that  age  that  was  distinguished  by  the  awakening  of  the 
intellect  of  Europe.  Scholarship  and  science  had  revived 
with  printing.  Men  began  to  think.  Language  was  improved 
by  Rabelais  and  Montaigne.  Luther,  and  the  deeper  heresy 
of  Calvin,  set  thought  free  upon  ecclesiasticism.  Something 
of  art  rnd  refinement  came  in  from  Italy,  and  the  Italian  sur- 
vival of  Roman  municipal  citizenship  had  brought  about  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  communes.  Out  of  these  conditions 
came  the  civil  founders  of  New  France. 

On  the  surface  of  the  round  globe,  in  the  summer  of  1534? 
perhaps  no  movement  of  equal  portent  was  less  conspicuous 
than  the  slow  creeping  of  the  white  sails  of  Jacques  Cartier's 
little  vessels  up  the  stream  of  that  great  flood,  the  St.  Law- 
rence River.  But  one  ship  of  adventurers  followed  another, 
and  Champlain  came,  and  the  Jesuits,  and  the  first  colony  in 
Canada  was  founded  on  the  great  rock  of  Quebec  in  1608, 
and  more  substantially  in  1620.  In  that  year  the  Mayflower 
landed  her  company,  and  in  the  same  year  Frontenac  was 
born.  Year  by  year  colonists  came  from  France ;  shiploads 
of  peasants,  traders,  seamen  from  St.  Malo  and  other  seaport 
towns,  a  few  ruined  noblemen,  adventurers  of  every  class, 
penniless  gentlemen,  officers  and  soldiers,  women  in  companies, 
and  always  Jesuits  and  a  few  Franciscan  priests,  to  whom  it 
was  appalling  that  the  heathen  Indians  should  perish  when  a 
few  drops  of  water  would  bring  them  to  the  state  of  grace  of 
the  baptized  but  unsanctified  hunters  of  fortune  who  repre- 
sented the  civil  state  of  France  in  the  New  World.  A  fringe 
of  timorous  settlements  developed  for  two  or  three  hundred 
miles  along  the  borders  of  the  narrowing  river.  Behind  the 
settlements  lay  a  wilderness  of  distrustful  savages.  It  was 
the  tentative  approach,  the  stealthy  creeping  into  the  bosom 
of  a  new  world  of  a  form  of  society  that  had  worn  out  the 
conditions  of  life  and  subsistence  in  Europe.     It  was  the  fas- 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.  9 

tening  of  an  antique  parasite  upon  a  new  body  pulsating  in 
all  the  infinite  springs  and  currents  that  feed  the  requirements 
of  social  and  political  development.  The  colony  gained  vigor 
and  courage  as  it  drew  into  the  presence  oi  that  magnificent 
citadel  of  nature  whereon  the  c'ty  of  Quebec  was  founded, 
and  which  impressed  th'^  earliest  explorers  as  a  spot  appointed 
by  fate  to  be  the  capital  of  an  empire.  It  is  upon  this  cold, 
gray  rock,  this  anticipation  of  imperial  eminence,  that  we  first 
behold,  in  1672,  the  unique  and  feudal  figure  of  Louis,  Comte 
de  Frontenac,  the  Governor  of  Canada,  and  Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral  of  Louis  XIV.  of  France. 

The  background  against  which  this  figure  is  projected  is 
the  Europe  of  Anne  of  Austria  and  Mazarin  ;  of  the  regicides 
and  of  Cromwell ;  of  Louis  XIV.  and  the  Prince  of  Orange  ; 
of  the  Venetian  wars  with  the  Turks  ;  of  Turenne,  Cond6, 
Marlborough,  and  Gustavus  Adolphus.  On  it  are  taking 
place  historic  wars,  and  battles  great  in  the  politics  of  Europe. 
The  Czar  Peter  appears  in  his  shop  at  Zaandam  ;  the  Turks 
of  Kara  Mustapha,  with  their  horse-tail  standards,  are  before 
Vienna,  and  John  Sobieski  is  on  the  heights  of  the  Kalen- 
berg  ;  the  royal  charters  and  grants  of  American  territory  are 
issued,  and  the  great  movements  of  colonization  are  going  on. 
Frontenac  himself  belonged  rather  high  in  the  ranks  of  the 
nobility,  but  his  fortune  was  slender  and  soon  wasted.  His 
life  was  sp^nt  brilliantly  as  a  soldier  in  the  camps  of  the  Prince 
of  Orange,  in  command  of  the  regiment  of  Normandy  in  Ital- 
ian campaigns,  and  in  the  defence  of  Candia — the  Crete  of 
Ariadne  and  King  Minos.  He  v/as  made  a  colonel  at  seven- 
teen years  of  age,  and  was,  it  is  said,  an  eminent  lieutenant- 
general  at  twenty-nine,  covered  with  decorations  and  scars. 
It  was  was  not  pleasure,  but  ambition,  that  made  him  accept 
an  exile  in  a  world  of  savages  and  adventurers.  There,  it 
seemed,  was  to  be  reproduced,  in  its  beginnings,  the  same 
social  system  he  left  at  home.  There  were  to  be  gained  new 
lordships  and  seigniories  and  fortunes,  with  which  he  might 
return  to  the  court  of  Versailles. 

In  France  the  nobles,  who  with  increasing  numbers  but 
diminishing  powers  had  meddled  with  the  administration  of 


\MSmk 


tM^tftH'f  M',*! 


iHMllliKMi 


»t  TTsTtii;.!^  .-i-TrnBTiT; 


■•-•^H-rtM-  ~-.%;..iUi«:s;iinm*{r44rt«>(ii^tH't;i>-jini| 


10        Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


every  king  from  Capet  to  Louis  XII.,  saw  their  last  vestige  of 
share  in  the  government  disappear  on  the  scaffolds  of  Riche- 
lieu.    But  their  prerogatives  that  Richelieu  destroyed  were 
those  that  might  impede  the  king.     Their  rights  and  preroga- 
tives as  against  the  social  grades  below  them  were  not  the 
objects  of  his  jealousy.     When,  therefore,  great   seigniories 
were   carved  out   and  granted   in    Canada,   and   established 
under  the  code  of  French  laws  known  as  the  "  Customs  of 
Paris,"  the  political  and   social  conditions  of  feudal  France 
were  also  established,  and  were  fastened  upon  the  reluctant 
borders  of  the   great  river,  and  the  forest  freedom  of  inde- 
pendent tribes.     In  the  midst  and  at  the  head  of  such  a  sys- 
tem stood  Frontenac  at  Quebec.     He  was  the  fitting  repre- 
sentative of  Louis  XIV.     He  was  the  perfect  impersonation 
of  his  imperial  spirit  and  policy,  and  of  the  political  system 
of  his  time.      Our   purpose   here  is   not   with   the    general 
history  of  Canada,  nor  with  the  personal  history  of  Fronte- 
nac, but  with  the  social  and  political  movement  of  which  he 
was  the  representative.     Apart  from  the  easy  acquisition  of 
landed  estates,  and  the  hopes  that  lay  in  industry  and  tillage, 
a  special  allure  enticed  the  traders  and  emigrants  into  the 
northern  wilderness.     All  the   opulence  of  this  part  of  the 
world  lay  on  the  backs   of  the  little  animals  that  roamed  the 
forests  or  lived  on  the  banks  of  the  numerous  and  abundant 
streams.     What  diamonds  were  to  Golconda,  pearls  to  Cape 
Comorin,  gold    mines  to  Mexico    and    Peru,  wools    to   the 
vale  of  Cashmere,  spices  and  perfumes  to  Arabia,  that  were 
furs  to  the  vast  region  lying  north  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the 
Lakes.     A  magnificent  element  of  imperial  power  lay  in  the 
facility  which  the  position  of  Canada  gave  for  the  monopoly 
of  all  this  trade,  which   was  then  the  coveted  and  dispropor- 
tionate element  in  the  commv,'rce  of  the  world.     The  most 
zealous  restrictions  and  regulations  to  uphold  the  monopoly 
challenged  the  ingenuity  of  everyone  to  evade  and  defeat 
them.     Settlers  were  forbidden  to   trade  with   the  Indians, 
except    as  they    sold   their    furs    at    a    fixed    price.      They 
were  forbidden  to  leave  the    settled  country ;  and  trade  in 
the   wilderness   was   forbidden.      Noblemen    forfeited    their 


tjn;!:i2Hu=;:;s'i'!fe>;V 


liliilllfi 


!t"(«'iM;.!:.'J>ii;rl'ilii;!>iir 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


II 


lans, 


c  in 


rank  by  trade,  and  the  controlling  Jesuits  were  under  the 
common  prohibition.  But  everyone,  governor  and  intend- 
ant,  priests  and  soldiers,  gentlemen  and  all,  every  officer  ot 
the  government,  while  watching  like  a  weasel  every  other 
officer,  all  got  as  deep  as  they  could  with  hope  of  conceal- 
ment into  this  illicit  and  contraband  trade.  Down  the  St. 
Lawrence  and  down  the  stream  of  the  Ottawa  the  Indian 
canoes  came  paddling  every  year  in  fleets,  with  their  freight 
of  peltry.  A  cunning  strife  for  the  advantage  of  meet- 
ing them  caHiest  on  their  way,  or  of  meeting  the  wander- 
ing bands  in  tht  woods,  and  of  trading  there  for  their  furs 
equally  forestalled  the  law  and  the  commercial  sagacity  that 
ought  to  have  waited  for  the  competition  of  a  wider  market. 
The  allurements  of  traffic  and  zeal  fo-  the  conversion  of  sav- 
ages attracted  the  spirited  adventurers  and  missionaries  far- 
ther and  farther  up  the  river-courses  and  along  the  lakes  into 
the  recesses  of  the  unexplored  world,  until  they  came  upon 
the  streams  that  pour  into  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  Fol- 
lowing up  the  stream  of  the  Ottawa  and  Lake  Nipissing,  they 
came  to  the  upper  waters  of  Lake  Huron  and  to  the  Sault 
St.  Marie,  so  that  Lake  Erie  was  the  last  of  the  lakes  discov- 
ered, and  the  country  lying  south  of  it  the  last  explored  by 
the  French.  At  certain  points  which  were  known  to  be  proli- 
fic fishing-grounds,  and  at  others  where  game  abounded,  the 
Indians  were  accustomed  to  gather  in  great  numbers  and  for 
long  sojourns.  To  these  places  came  the  brave  missionaries 
and  established  their  missions.  Such  places  were  the  mis- 
sions of  St.  Esprit,  of  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  of  St.  Ignace,  of 
Michilimacinac,  and  the  head  of  Green  Bay,  where  Father 
Allouez  founded  the  mission  of  St.  Francis  Xavier.  In  the 
depths  of  the  forest  many  of  these  men,  pure-spirited  and 
devoted,  sought  and  found  the  seal  of  their  consecration  in 
fire  and  torture.  The  senses  and  the  intellect  stand  appalled 
by  the  doom  to  which  Pere  Brebeuf  was  consigned  and 
abandoned.  The  idea  of  moral  government  was  derided  by 
the  victory  of  fiends,  which  lighted  the  remote  recesses  of 
that  forest  theatre,  while  his  spirit  rose  exultant  because  the 
prayer  of  his  youth  in  distant  France,  and  of  all  his  life,  was 


n 


12        Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


answered,  that  God  would  accord  him  for  reward  the  honor 
of  martyrdom  in  the  wilderness.  Standing  before  him, 
young  Lallement,  lashed  from  head  to  foot  in  strips  of  bark 
and  pitch,  ready  for  the  match,  revived  the  memory  of  the 
living  torches  with  which  Nero  lighted  the  Vatican  gardens, 
that  are  now  within  the  crab-like  arms  of  St.  Peter's.  Under 
the  forest  the  dark  earth  was  dumb,  and  the  stars  above  were 
silent,  and  through  the  mist  of  horror  and  of  distance  he 
must  have  seen  the  door  of  his  humble  home  by  the  Seine, 
while  faith  struggled  to  meet  its  silent  reproach  of  useless 
abandonment.  But  wherever  these  men  went  they  carried 
the  empire  of  the  king  and  the  supremacy  of  the  Church. 
When  they  erected  by  the  shore,  or  carved  on  the  bark  of 
trees  the  arms  of  France,  they  set  above  them  the  cross  of 
the  ecclesiastical  dominion. 

But  Frontenac  was  the  representative  of  his  feudal  master 
in  the  citadel  of  Quebec,  and  of  the  arms  of  his  civil  and  po- 
litical power.  To  extend  the  domain  of  France,  to  vindicate 
in  the  new  world  the  pre-eminence  of  his  king,  to  construct 
and  cement  the  foundations  of  a  grand  empire,  was  the  splen- 
did dream  of  Frontenac's  ambition.  He  thought,  as  the  ec- 
clesiastics also  did,  that  the  emigrant  colonists  and  the  In- 
dians could  be  amalgamated  and  made  the  basic  population 
of  a  civilized  and  industrial  state.  He  also  hoped  to  build 
up  his  ovvn  ruined  fortunes  and  confirm  them  with  wealth 
and  distinction.  To  his  mind  here  was  a  vast  population 
and  a  vaster  territory  ready  to  be  carved  into  seigniories  ; 
and  to  the  eyes  of  the  ecclesiastics  there  was  a  corresponding 
field  for  ecclesiastical  ambition.  An  alliance  of  sympathy 
between  him  and  La  Salle,  and  a  common  interest  in  the  il- 
licit traffic  of  the  time,  gave  him  the  reinforcement  of  views 
and  ambition  as  wide  and  daring  as  his  own.  A  military 
fortress  at  the  very  head  of  the  St.  Lawrence  would  mani- 
festly extend  and  confirm  the  dominion  of  the  king,  and  with 
equal  certainty  anticipate  the  fur  trade  in  the  secret  interest 
of  Frontenac  and  La  Salle.  By  rapid  action  the  governor 
built  the  formidable  fort  named  Frontenac,  where  the  city 
of  Kingston  stands.     Already  a   large  seigniory  had   been 


;;iT;'::iiirf:' 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


n 


given  to  La  Salle,  just  above  Montreal,  at  La  Chine.  Sub- 
sequently Fort  Frontenac,  with  a  wide  surrounding  territory, 
was  also  given  to  him  as  a  seigniory.  A  little  later,  another 
great  feudal  seigniory,  that  marked  the  extension  of  French 
empire,  was  carved  out  and  granted  to  La  Salle,  in  the  heart 
of  Illinois,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  continent,  near  the  con- 
fluence of  the  greatest  rivers,  and  at  a  point  that  seemed  to 
dominate  the  springs  and  the  courses  of  political  and  com- 
mercial supremacy. 

The  Northwest  lies  where  the  great  valleys  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  and  the  Lakes,  and  the  Mississippi,  ascending,  meet 
and  merge  into  each  other  ;  and  bearing  a  similar  relation  to 
both,  it  geographically  dominates  that  tremendous  sweep 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  La  Salle  planted 
his  Fort  St.  Louis  of  the  Illinois  on  the  summit  of  Starved 
Rock,  to  make  it  the  centre  of  his  colony  in  the  midst  of  this 
region,  central  and  commanding  for  all  the  vast  extent  of 
new  French  empire.  A  continuous  French  occupation  of 
Illinois,  since  his  settlement  in  1679,  marks  La  Salle  as  its 
founder.  The  old  French  town,  Kaskaskia,  was  its  capital  in 
1 71 2,  as  Fort  Chartres,  a  formidable  fortress,  was  afterward. 
Lying  partly  at  the  head  of  the  Lake  >  and  the  St.  Lawrence, 
and  partly  at  the  head  of  the  Mississippi,  which  receives  the 
waters  of  thirty-five  thousand  miles  of  navigable  affluents, 
walled  in  from  the  Atlantic  slope  by  the  Apallachian  Moun- 
tains, a  superior  sentiment  of  political  and  social  community 
of  the  Northwest  with  these  great  openings  to  the  outer  world 
is  inevitable.  The  strength  of  this  natural  tendency  is  rarely 
perhaps  appreciated,  nor  the  extent  to  which  it  is  now  neu- 
tralized, and  even  overcome,  by  the  efifect  of  the  great  rail- 
ways which  cross  the  mountain  barriers  and  run  directly  to 
the  coast,  particularly  by  that  great  artificial  highway  which 
comes  to  the  bay  of  New  York  through  the  wonderful  gate- 
way of  the  Mohawk,  where  the  beetling  precipices  barely 
make  room  for  the  passage  of  the  railways,  the  telegraph, 
the  canal,  the  highway,  and  the  river,  and  that  other  one 
which  comes  to  the  same  point  by  surmounting  the  Alle- 
ghenies  in  Pennsylvania.     To  thus  rival  and  overcome  the 


( 


14        Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 

influence  of  such  vast  natural  waterways  as  those  of  the  Lakes 
and  the  Mississippi,  and  consolidate  the  sentiment  of  a  com- 
mon country  as  against  Alpine  divisions,  is  an  impressive 
evidence  of  the  social  and  political  force  exerted  by  these  ar- 
tificial avenues  of  commerce. 

It  was  the  imperial  political  influence  and  power  inherent 
in  this  position  which  was  comprehended  by  Frontenac  and 
La  Salle.  La  Salle  went  up  the  St.  Lawrence  exploring  a 
way  to  China.  It  is  amusing  at  this  day  to  find  in  the  little 
Canadian  town  of  La  Chine,  by  the  rapids,  the  memento  of 
his  geographical  hallucination.  Gradually  but  effectively  the 
vision  of  Asia  and  of  the  opulence  that  lay  in  oriental  com- 
merce faded  from  the  view  of  the  explorers,  and  one  of  Eu- 
ropean dominion  and  feudal  seigniories  in  the  heart  of  the 
American  continent  shone  in  its  place. 

The  emigrant  founders  of  this  new  empire  were  not  seek- 
ing escape  from  any  obnoxious  principles  of  government,  or 
institutions  of  society  of  the  country  they  came  from.  They 
had  no  purpose  to  improve  or  to  change  the  church  or  the 
state,  or  to  improve  the  general  condition  of  the  more  bur- 
dened classes.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  no  purpose 
specifically  to  extend  any  particular  system  of  society.  The 
law  of  France,  i.e.,  its  political  system,  went  to  its  colony  as 
of  course.  But  every  man  hoped  under  the  same  social 
framework  to  improve  his  own  relative  position  in  the  form. 
From  the  noble  to  the  peasant  no  one  thought  of  improving 
the  form  of  the  state  ;  but  every  one  hoped  for  a  better  rela- 
tive position  in  it.  The  peasant  hoped  to  be  a  landed  pro- 
prietor under  conditions  of  comfort.  The  bourgeois  trader, 
and  the  untitled  gentleman  who  literally  found  no  room  for 
himself  in  France,  hoped  for  titles  and  distinction  in  the  new 
empire.  They  made  no  objection  to  seigniories,  and,  on  the 
contrary,  they  hoped  to  become  seigniors.  The  system, 
however,  contemplated  a  vast  underlying  mass  of  subject 
people,  upon  whom  should  devolve  the  burdens  of  all  servi- 
tude, and  upon  whose  palpitating  bodies  the  heels  of  all  su- 
perior classes  should,  as  in  France,  trample  without  resist- 
ance ;  and  to  this  fortunate  field  were  relegated,  in  the  mind 


( 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


15 


of  the  peasant  emigrant,  the  whole  vast  Indian  population,  to 
be  turned  toward  industry  and  Christianized  ;  and  in  the 
minds  of  the  nobles  and  the  priests  and  the  gentlemen,  the 
Indians  and  the  peasant  emigrants  as  well. 

Now  it  would  be  incorrect  to  say  that  these  people  under- 
took and  expected  to  transplant  to  the  new  world  the  im-- 
perial  splendors  of  the  empire  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  to  repro- 
duce there  the  glories  of  Versailles  and  the  lordly  life  of  the 
French  nobility  in  the  provinces.  It  is  probable  that  through 
the  mist  of  many  intervening  years  their  imagination  may 
have  seen  the  castellated  forms  of  towers  that  served  to  illus- 
trate the  distinction  of  their  posterity,  and  the  ecclesiastical 
pinnacles  that  betokened  the  triumphs  of  their  faith  ;  but 
they  knew  that  for  themselves  their  homes  were  to  be  made 
in  the  midst  of  a  wilderness  which  they  must  redeem  ;  among 
savages  whom  they  must  reclaim  or  destroy.  They  knew 
their  lives  were  doomed  to  exile,  to  peril  unceasing,  to  toil 
without  respite.  Whatever  might  lie  in  the  future,  there  was 
for  them  nothing  of  the  splendors  of  French  government  or 
society.  Meanwhile  the  tenant  broke  up  the  forest  on  the 
land  held  of  his  seignior,  and  watched  from  his  cabin  for  the 
stealthy  attack  of  savages  ;  and  the  seignior,  in  his  log  cha- 
teau, held  his  courts  and  contentedly  received  his  feudal  hom- 
age and  his  feudal  rental  of  farthings  and  poultry.  But 
these  were  the  poor  and  severe  beginnings,  as  he  felt  assured, 
of  an  empire  that  might  some  day  be  splendid,  wherein  even 
the  beginnings  of  rank  were  of  value  ;  and  in  the  petty  court 
at  Montreal  or  Quebec  the  beggarly  officers  and  nobles  and 
gentry  and  traders,  in  decorations  and  costumes  that  might 
often  forbid  them  to  ridicule  the  gaudy  bedeckings  of  the  for- 
est chiefs  at  a  council  fire,  aped  the  manners  and  studied  the 
distinctions  that  obtained  in  France. 

So  it  is  true  that  there  was  nothing  noble  or  elevated  in 
the  movement  itself,  nor  ennobling  or  dignifying  in  the  mo- 
tives or  purpose  of  its  participants.  It  was  the  most  com- 
monplace form  of  colonization,  a  mere  swarming  from  an  oc- 
cupied to  an  empty  field — from  a  field  wherein  by  their  ut- 
most endeavor  most  men  could  barely  hold  their  own  in  the 


Miiiiiiiiiii 


S1BIHF<^<^^^ 


i6 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


bitter  and  weary  competition  for  livelihood,  to  one  where  the 
extreme  of  toil,  hardship,  and  peril  promised  an  ultimate  se- 
curity, competence,  and  independence.  It  is  the  nature  oi 
such  movements,  because  they  involve  no  element  of  revolt, 
to  carry  with  them  the  law  and  social  usage  of  the  parent 
country.  The  movement  is  not  founded  in  any  new  concep- 
tion or  scheme  of  government  or  law,  but  only  in  the  per- 
sonal interest  of  each  participant,  and  so  the  old  conditions 
go  with  the  emigrant  as  of  course,  borne  like  the  moraines  on 
the  backs  of  glaciers.  It  was  so  with  Phcenician  and  Greek 
colonies,  and  Dorian  and  Corinthian  colonies  were  Dorian 
and  Corinthian  themselves  to  the  end.  Such  colonies  there- 
fore are  duplex  in  character.  From  the  stand-point  of  the 
empire  or  sovereignty  which  sends  them  out,  they  are  the 
outposts  of  the  empire,  the  propugnacula  imperii  of  Cicero,  a 
medium  of  extension  of  language  and  administration,  and  of 
imperial  expansion.  The  movement  is  susceptible  of  becom- 
ing one  of  momentous  historical  importance  and  consequence. 
But  looked  at  from  the  stand-point  of  the  colonist,  it  is  digni- 
fied by  no  moral  or  political  purpose.  It  is  wholly  contained 
within  the  limits  of  the  personal  self-seeking  of  the  individual 


emigrant. 


It  is  this  social  and  political  freight,  which  is  thus  borne 
without  conscious  purpose  by  currents  of  immigration,  which 
gives  historical  importance  to  the  French  establishment  in 
Canada,  and  its  movements  into  the  Northwest.  The  emi- 
grants exhibited  the  hardihood  and  endurance  common  to  all 
who  are  pioneers  in  a  new  country.  The  missionaries  illus- 
trated that  zeal  for  their  cause  and  that  faith  in  their  religion 
which  is  everywhere  found  among  the  martyrs  to  religious 
belief  and  the  champions  of  an  ecclesiastical  system.  These, 
admirable  as  they  are,  are  the  commonplaces  of  history  after 
all,  like  the  courage  and  the  grand  exploits  of  soldiers  ;  but 
the  chance  which  existed  that  the  feudal  conditions  of  con- 
tinental Europe  might  be  actually  established  on  this  con- 
tinent, and  on  the  very  banks  of  the  Illinois,  is  a  matter  that 
we  may  well  pause  and  make  the  subject  of  reflection. 

A  seigniory  in  the  time  of  Frontenac  represented  the 


mmm 


"iPffllW^??? 


Fronteuac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


17 


ere  the 
late  se- 
ture  01 
revolt, 
parent 
;oncep- 
le  per- 
iditions 
ines  on 
1  Greek 
Dorian 
5  there- 
:  of  the 
are  the 
icero,  a 
and  of 
becom- 
quence. 
s  digni- 
)ntained 
dividual 

s  borne 
1,  which 
ment  in 
le  emi- 
)n  to  all 
es  illus- 
religion 
cligious 
These, 
ry  after 
IS  ;  but 
of  con- 
lis  con- 
ter  that 

ted  the 


aggregate  abuse   of  all   the   privilege   and   prerogative  ac- 
quired by  the  chiefs  since  the  Prankish  conquest.     With  the 
changes  of  society  every  privilege  had   been  preserved  and 
every  public  burden  evaded.     The  nobles  held  all  the  wealth 
of  the  country,  but  the  burden  of  taxes  was  rolled  off  upon 
the  toiling  populations  who  worked  the  lands  and  made  the 
highways,  and  had  nothing  left  but  broken  spirits  when  their 
work  was  done.     The  seignior  lived  as  a  prince  among  the 
people  who  had  once  been  serfs.      He  had  his  precedence, 
and  his  ancestral  tombs  in  the  church  ;  he  held  his  courts  of 
high  and  low  jurisdiction,  appointed  petty  officers  within  his 
realm,  v,ad  enforced  his  laws  by  his  prison  and  often  by  his 
gibbet.     To  him  went  forfeited  and  confiscated  property,  all 
property  found,  and  waifs  and  wrecks  ;  and  a  share  of  every- 
thing produced  by  the  labor  of  his  people,  and  fines  on  every 
change    of  title.     Tolls    and  contributions  and   monopolies 
were  a  torment  and  an  oppression.     He  established  his  scales, 
his  markets,  and  his  mill,  his  oven,  wine-press,  and  slaughter- 
house, and  to  these  all  must  come  with  their  tolls.     Such 
were  the  seigniories  granted  and  established  in  New  France. 
Frontenac  was  gravely  rebuked  in   1672  by  Colbert  for  the 
first  step  toward  a  recognition  of  the  estates  and  the  institu- 
tion of  a  municipal  government  for  Quebec.     "  You  are  al- 
ways," he  said,   "  to  follow,  in     le  government  of  Canada, 
the  forms  in  use  here ;   and  since  our  kings  have  long  re- 
garded it  as  good  for  their  service  not  to  convoke  the  states 
of  the  kingdom,  in  order,  perhaps,  to  abolish  insensibly  this 
ancient  usage,  you   on  your  part  should  very  rarely,  or  to 
speak  more  correctly,  never  give  a  corporate  form  to  the 
inhabitants  of  Canada.     You    should   even,   as    the   colony 
strengthens,  suppress  gradually  the  office  of  the  syndic  who 
presents  petitions  in  the  name  of  the  inhabitants  ;  for  it  is 
well  that  each  should  speak  for  himself  and  none  for  all.'" 
A  writer  upon  the  "  Constitutional  History  of  Canada"  illus- 
trates the  social  situation  in  the  following  statement : 

•'  At  the  time  of  the  Conquest  [1763],  the  seigniors  and 
the  peasants  constituted  two  important  factors  in  the  problem 

'  Parkman's  Frontenac,  p.  2a 


l8 


Frontenac  aud  Miles  Standish  in  the  Nortlnvest. 


I' 

11  I 


of  a  new  government.  The  seigniors  were  entitled,  accord- 
ing to  the  code  of  feudalism,  to  erect  courts  and  to  preside 
in  them  as  judges.  They  could  administer  what  was  known 
as  '/laute,  moycnnc  et  basse  justice.'  They  could  take  cogni- 
zance of  all  crimes  committed  within  their  jurisdiction,  except 
murder  and  treason.  If  they  did  not,  in  the  French  period, 
exercise  their  tyrannous  rights  over  the  lives,  limbs,  and  liber- 
ties of  their  vassals,  it  was  because  they  were  too  poor  to  or- 
ganize the  machinery  of  seigniorial  courts,  build  dungeons, 
and  retain  jailers  and  executioners.  That  it  was  this  power 
to  crush,  which  was  wanting  to  the  seigniors,  and  not  the 
spirit,  may  be  seen  in  their  complaint  of  the  hardship  of  not 
being  permitted,  under  British  rule,  to  exercise  their  feudal 
jurisdiction.  .  .  .  The  feeling  of  the  peasants  toward 
their  seigniors  was  fear,  not  affection.  This  experience, 
however,  is  as  wide  as  the  circuit  of  Europe,  and  as  old  as 
feudalism.  In  the  injuries  done  him  by  his  seignior  the 
Canadian  peasant  could  only  suffer  ;  redress  he  had  none. 
The  people  who  were  not  '  noble,'  and  who  were  more  than 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  a  thousand,  were  well 
pleased  that  the  battering-ram  of  the  Common  Law  had 
broken  down  the  fortress  of  unjust  privilege,  which  in  the 
period  of  French  domination  had  walled  in  the  noble  from 
the  consequences  of  his  acts."  ' 

Such,  then,  was  an  American  seigniory  in  point  of  its  legal 
establishment.  The  torture  of  the  rack  was  of  common  oc- 
currence in  the  administration  of  criminal  law  in  Canada.' 
It  has  been  found  agreeable  by  writers  to  depict  in  pleasing 
pictures  the  Arcadian  simplicity  and  contented  peace  of  the 
French  and  Indian  colonies  in  Illinois,  led  by  Pfere  Grav- 
ier,  Marest,  and  others,  to  the  vicinity  of  Kaskaskia  and  Old 
Fort  Chartres,  with  their  careless  and  idle  lives  in  their 
white-washed  and  vine-clad  cottages;'  and  literature  is  be- 
ginning to  throw  over  the  indolent  security  of  these  people 
that  picturesque  aspect  of  peace"  which  is  illustrated  by  the 

'  Watson,  Constitutional  History  of  Canada,  pp.  11-14. 
'  Watson,  Constitutional  History  of  Canada,  p.  25,  /\lote, 
*  Breese,  History  of  Illinois,  pp.  195-200,  223-231. 


i     ! 


y/. 


Froutenac  and  Miles  Siaiuiish  in  the  Northivest. 


19 


accord- 
preside 
known 
:  cogni- 
, except 
period, 
nd  liber- 
or  to  or- 
ingeons, 
is  power 
not  the 
ip  of  not 
ir  feudal 
,   toward 
Derience, 
as  old  as 
jnior  the 
lad  none, 
lore  than 
were  well 
Law   had 
;h  in   the 
3le  from 

its  legal 
nmon  oc- 
Canada.' 

pleasing 
ice  of  the 
bre  Grav- 

and  Old 

in  their 
ire  is  be- 
se  people 
ed  by  the 


antitheses  of  fortresses  grass-grown,  and  of  birds  nesting  in 
the  very  embrasures  of  the  cannon.  Hut  this  was  because 
only  that  part  of  the  machinery  of  this  political  and  social 
system  was  in  operation  which  they  controlled  and  operated 
themselves,  and  the  iron  hand  of  superior  power  had  not  yet 
been  fell  among  them  when  they  passed  under  the  sover- 
eignty of  England.  They  had  no  Anglo-Saxon  comprehen- 
sion of  political  rights,  or  idea  of  participation  in  public 
affairs  ;  no  Anglo-Saxon  capacity  to  take  it  when  offered. 
Upon  these  subjects  they  were  perfectly  indifferent,  and  ut- 
terly without  aspiration  or  sense  of  responsibility.'  They  il- 
lustrated all  the  characteristics  of  our  Southern  African  people 
since  their  enfranchisement.     Fortunately  it  is  unnecessary 

'  "In  the  year  1818  the  whole  people  numbered  about  forty-five  thousand  souls. 
Some  two  thousand  of  these  were  the  descendants  of  the  old  French  settlers  in 
the  villages  of  Kaskaskia,  Prairie  du  Rocher,  Prairie  du  Pont,  Cahokia,  Peoria, 
and  Chicago.  These  people  had  fields  in  common  for  farming,  and  farmed,  built 
houses,  and  lived  in  the  style  of  the  peasantry  in  old  France  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago.  They  had  made  no  improvements  in  anytiiing,  nor  had  they  adopted 
any  of  the  improvements  made  by  others.  They  were  the  descendants  of  those 
French  people  who  had  first  settled  the  country,  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  before,  under  Lasalle,  Iberville,  and  the  priests  Alvarez,  Rasles,  (iravier, 
Pinet,  Marest,  and  others,  and  such  as  subsequently  joined  them  from  New  Orleans 
and  Canada ;  and  they  now  formed  all  that  remained  of  the  once  proud  empire 
which  Louis  XIV.,  king  of  France,  and  the  regent  Duke  of  Orleans,  had  intended  to 
plant  in  the  Illinois  country.  The  original  settlers  had  many  of  them  intermarried 
with  the  native  Indians,  and  some  of  the  descendants  of  these  partook  of  the  wild, 
roving  disposition  of  the  savage,  united  to  the  politeness  and  courtesy  of  the 
Frenchman.  In  the  year  1818,  and  for  many  years  before,  the  crews  of  keel-boats 
on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Rivers  were  furnished  from  the  Frenchmen  of  this 
stock.  Many  of  them  spent  a  great  part  of  their  time,  in  the  spring  and  fall  sea- 
sons, in  paddling  their  canoes  up  and  down  the  rivers  and  lakes  in  the  river  bot- 
toms, on  hunting  excursions  in  pursuit  of  deer,  fur,  and  wild  fowl,  and  generally 
returned  home  well  loaded  with  skins,  fur,  and  feathers,  which  were  with  them  the 
great  staple  of  trade.  Those  who  stayed  at  home  contented  tiiemselves  with  cul- 
tivating a  few  acres  of  Indian  corn,  in  their  common  fields,  for  bread,  and  provide 
ing  a  supply  of  prairie  hay  for  their  cattle  and  horses.  No  genuine  Frenchman  in 
those  days  ever  wore  a  hat,  cap,  or  coat.  The  heads  of  both  men  and  women 
were  covered  with  Madras  cotton  handkerchiefs,  which  were  tied  around^  in  the  fash- 
ion of  night-caps.  F'or  an  upper  covering  of  the  body  the  men  wore  a  blanket  gar- 
ment, called  a  'capot  '  (pronou*^  -d  cappo),  with  a  cap  to  it  at  the  back  of  the 
neck,  to  be  drawn  over  the  he  i  for  a  protection  in  cold  weather,  or  in  warm 
weather  to  be  thrown  back  on  the  shoulders  in  the  fashion,  ol  a,  cape.     Notwitb- 


ao 


Front enac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


to  explore  tlie  outlines  of  the  great  dominion  that  was  given 
to  the  seignior  of  Fort  St.  Louis  of  the  Illinois,  for  the  present 
proprietor,  even  of  Starved  Rock  itself,  will  searcii  in  vain  the 
abstract  of  his  title  for  the  slightest  trace  of  the  great  seigniory 
of  Robert  Cavclier  de  La  Salle. 


\  \ 


The  other  movement  came  upon  our  coast  at  the  shallow 
bay  of  Plymouth.  There  came  into  New  England  then  not 
only  the  Pilgrims,  but  the  constitution  of  the  Mayflower. 

An  iceberg  drifting  in  the  sea  is  not  more  cleanly  parted 
from  its  original  than  the  community  in  the  cabin  of  the  May- 
flower was  from  the  political  society  it  left  behind.     Conceive 

standing  tins  people  luid  been  so  long  separated  by  an  immense  wilderness  from 
civilized  society,  they  still  retainal  all  the  suavity  and  politeness  of  their  race. 
And  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  roughest  hunter  and  boatman  among  them 
could  at  any  time  appear  in  a  ball-room,  or  other  polite  and  gay  assembly,  with 
the  carriage  and  behavior  of  a  well-bred  gentleman.  The  French  women  were 
remarkable  for  the  sprightliness  of  their  conversation  and  the  grace  and  elegance  of 
their  manners.  And  the  whole  population  lived  lives  of  alternate  toil,  pleasure, 
innocent  amusement,  and  gayety. 

*'  Their  horses  and  cattle,  for  want  of  proper  care  and  food  for  many  generations, 
had  degenerated  in  size,  but  had  acquired  additional  vigor  and  toughness,  so  that 
a  French  pony  was  a  proverb  for  strength  and  endurance.  These  ponies  were 
made  to  draw,  sometimes  one  alone,  sometimes  two  together,  one  hitched  before 
the  other,  to  the  plough,  or  to  carts  made  entirely  of  wood,  the  bodies  of  which 
held  about  double  the  contents  of  the  body  of  a  common  wheelbarrow.  The 
oxen  were  yoked  by  the  horns  instead  of  the  neck,  and  in  this  mode  were  made  to 
draw  the  plough  and  cart.  Nothing  like  reins  were  ever  used  in  driving ;  the 
whip  of  the  driver,  with  a  handle  about  two  feet,  and  a  lash  two  yards  long, 
stopped  or  guided  the  horse  as  effectually  as  the  strongest  reins. 

"  The  French  houses  were  mostly  built  of  hewn  timber,  set  upright  in  the  ground, 
or  upon  plates  laid  upon  a  wall,  the  intervals  between  the  upright  pieces  being 
filled  with  stone  and  mortar.  Scarcely  any  of  them  were  more  than  one  story 
high,  with  a  porch  on  one  or  two  sides,  and  sometimes  all  around,  with  low  roofs 
extending  with  slopes  of  different  steepness  from  the  comb  in  the  centre  to  the 
lowest  part  of  the  porch.  These  houses  were  generally  placed  in  gardens,  sur- 
rounded by  fruit-trees  of  apples,  pears,  cherries,  and  peaches;  and  in  the  villages 
each  enclosure  for  a  house  and  garden  occupied  a  whole  block  or  square,  or  the 
greater  part  of  one.  Each  village  had  its  Catholic  church  and  priest.  The 
church  was  the  great  place  of  gay  resort  on  Sundays  and  holidays,  and  the  priest 
was  the  adviser  and  director  and  companion  of  all  his  flock.  The  people  looked 
up  to  him  with  affection  and  reverence,  and  he  upon  them  with  compassion  and 
tenderness."— Ford's  History  of  Illinois,  pp.  35-38. 


St. 

IS  given 

present 

vain  the 

eigniory 


;  shallow 
then  not 
wer. 

ly  parted 
the  May- 
Conceive 

lerness  from 
f  their  race, 
among  them 
iembly,  with 
women  were 
id  elegance  of 
)il,  pleasure, 

'  generations, 
ness,  so  that 

ponies  were 
itched  before 
:lies  of  which 
)arrow.  The 
were  made  to 

driving ;    the 
yards  long, 

in  the  ground, 
pieces  being 
lan  one  story 
(vith  low  roofs 
centre  to  the 
gardens,   sur- 
in  the  villages 
square,  or  the 
1  priest.     The 
and  the  priest 
people  looked 
om  passion  and 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Staudish  in  the  Northwest. 


21 


as  sharply  as  one  can  of  the  cleavage  that  marked  the  separa- 
tion and  he  will  hardly  exaggerate  it.  The  legal  fiction  of  ex- 
tra-territorial jurisdiction  was  put  in  practical  abeyance.  With- 
in the  ship  floated  a  political  fragment  broken  off  from  the  peo- 
ple of  England.  With  no  charter  or  incorporation  ;  with  no 
authority  from  the  English  sovereign  ;  with  no  grant  of  ter- 
ritory from  any  pope  or  king  ;  with  a  ship  hired  solely  to 
convey  them  across  the  Atlantic — the  little  people  rode  the  wa- 
ters a  moving  and  unorganized  assembly.  Within  the  shelter 
of  Cape  Cod  they  framed  a  political  organization  as  original 
as  if  they  were. the  only  inhabitants  of  the  earth.  A  collec- 
tive body  of  individuals,  by  virtue  of  the  sovereignty  which  in- 
hered in  them,  created  themselves  a  civil  body  politic  for  gov- 
ernment. Here  were  declared  the  principles  of  sovereignty 
in  the  people,  of  civil  liberty,  of  justice  and  equality  in  laws, 
and  the  subordination  of  each  person  to  the  "  general  good." 
There  was  no  reservation  of  the  laws  of  England.  They  un- 
derstood that  they  were  erecting  a  new  state  upon  indepen- 
dent and  original  foundations,  for  the  action  was  thought  to  be 
made  necessary  by  an  inclination  which  developed  in  certain 
of  the  number  to  assert  and  use  the  absolute  liberty  of  indi- 
viduals who  had  passed  out  from  under  any  civil  government 
whatever.  But  this  new  state  imparted  to  its  lav;  an  original 
sanction  derived  from  sovereignty  within  itself,  and  not  from 
an  extension  of  the  sovereignty  of  England.  The  act  was 
deliberate  and  can  bear  no  other  construction.'  By  the  effect 
of  this  constitution  feudalism,  with  its  tenures,  entails,  and 
primogeniture,  was  extinct  among  this  people.  Mr.  Bancroft 
says  it  "  was  the  birth  of  popular  constitutional  liberty,"  and 
that  "  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower  humanity  recovered  its 
rights."'  It  is  true;  and  by  one  act  all  the  constitutional 
history  of  the  states  of  Europe,  from  Pompey  the  Great  to 
John  Hampden,  fell  out,  and  the  free  principles  of  the  old 
Roman  constitution  survived  in  the  constitution  of  the  May- 
flower. 


'  Palfrey,   History  of  New  England,  vol.  i.,  p.  164,  note  i. 
Pilgrim  Republic,  p.  62. 

'  History  of  U.  S.,  vol.  i.,  p.  31a 


Goodwin,  The 


^™.-.    ■iSBK«.«r'-t4:,iH»<u.*ftii 


i.^>i;^Hit^S»«it^fJM«SW, 


22 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  tn  the  Northwest. 


ih  ! 


11 


This  isolation  from  the  associations  of  the  old  world, 
which  was  intended  by  the  Pilgrir^s,  makes  them  the  expo- 
nent of  a  peculiar  organization  of  society.  They  left  behind 
them  something  more  than  three  thousand  miles  of  barren  and 
pathless  sea.  They  left  behind  the  political  system  and  the 
ecclesiastical  system,  with  their  combinations  and  their  com- 
mmgled  traditions,  wliich  were  rooted  in  the  general  thought 
of  the  communities  they  abandoned.  They  had  to  disengage 
themselves  from  this  mental  complication.  They  had  to  make 
a  break  with  the  past.  They  left  the  old  communities  to 
work  out  their  results  in  England  by  the  more  or  less  violent 
processes  of  social  evolution  ;  but  they  needed  a  new  planet 
or  a  fresh  wilderness  for  their  own  scheme  of  social  polity  un- 
entangled  with  antique  traditions  that  tended  against  them. 
In  this  light  the  great  Puritan  colonization  of  1830  contained 
elements  of  a  different  character,  and  was  not  of  equal  dignity 
with  that  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth.  While  greater  in 
mass  and  far  ex'^eeding  in  all  the  elements  that  constitute  so- 
cial and  political  power  ;  while  the  details  of  its  turbulent  and 
picturesque  history  have,  because  Massachusetts  has  furnished 
its  literature,  overshadowed  the  consistent  and  uncomplicated 
annals  of  Plymouth,  nevertheless,  to  a  degree  that  cannot  be 
ignored  and  ought  not  to  be  obscured,  it  had  the  common- 
place character  of  ordinary  colonizing  movements.  There 
was  not  the  same  sharp-cut  cleavage  from  old-world  condi- 
tions. Like  all  the  colonizing  movements  of  the  world,  ex- 
cept that  of  Plymouth,  it  carried  upon  its  back  the  common- 
place freight  of  the  traditional  law  and  habit  of  thought,  and 
social  usage  of  the  parent  country.  The  basic  purpose  of  the 
movement  was  identical  with  that  of  Plymouth — to  find  liberty 
and  a  new  state  in  a  new  world — and  the  difference  between 
Puritan  and  Non-conformist  and  Separatist  counted  for  noth- 
ing. The  appearance  of  church  loyalty,  which  expediency 
had  main<^ained,  dissolved  instantly  under  the  independence 
of  the  new  community  and  the  example  and  counsel  of  Plym- 
outh.' A  living  fire  from  the  altar  of  Calvin  glowed  in  the 
souls  of  all  alike.     These  were  not  ruined  and  debauched 


Doyle,  Puritan  Colonies,  vol.  i.,  p.  95. 


St, 


hrontenac  and  Miles  Staudish  in  the  Northwest. 


23 


world, 
\c  expo- 
t  behind 
rren  and 
and  the 
eir  corn- 
thought 
isengage 
i  to  make 
nities  to 
IS  violent 
w  planet 
)olity  un- 
ist  them. 
:ontained 
:il  dignity 
reater  in 
stitute  so- 
)ulentand 
furnished 
mplicated 
cannot  be 
common- 
s.     There 
rid  condi- 
vorld,  ex- 
common- 
ught,  and 
ose  of  the 
nd  liberty 
e  between 

for  noth- 

pediency 
^pcndence 
1  of  Plym- 

ed  in  the 
iebauched 


noblemen,  nor  penniless  "gentlemen,"  hangers-on  of  the 
great,  and  vagabonds  by  inherita.;  e  ;  nor  hunters  of  fortune 
or  glory,  nor  the  refuse  of  the  seaports  or  the  farms,  nor  the 
criminais  of  the  state.  They  belonged  to  the  manliest  and 
most  intellectually  accomplished  part  of  the  inhabitants  of 
England.  They  worthily  represented  the  best  heart  and 
brain  and  character  and  scholarship  of  England,  the  material 
of  the  Parliaments  of  El'zabeth,  of  Cromwell's  army,  the  as- 
sociates and  friends  of  Milton  and  Algernon  Sidnev.  Fron- 
tenac  called  them  "  genuine  old  parliamentarians,"  and  "  the 
rebels  and  old  fepublican  leaven  of  Cromwell."  '  They  in- 
cluded graduates  of  the  ^reat  universities  of  England,  and 
among  them  men  like  Thomas  Hooker  and  like  John  Cotton, 
who  abandoned  the  stateliest  parish  church  in  England  for 
the  primitive  meeting-house  of  the  Massachusetts  colony."* 
The  participants  in  this  movement  came  of  a  set  purpose. 
They  spurned  the  mines  and  the  fountains  of  Indian  fable. 
They  knew  history,  and  they  held  a  philosophy  of  history  by 
which  the  ultimate  goal  was  not  the  extension  of  any  form  of 
government,  nor  of  any  ecclesiastical  system,  but  the  establish- 
ment of  whatever  would  best  develop  the  faculties  of  every 
individual  under  its  influence.  The  end  of  history  with  them 
was  the  development  of  man — not  of  a  government  nor  of  a 
church.  It  is  said  that  "  they  were  animated,  likf  a  Greek 
colony,  with  the  desire  to  reproduce  the  political  life  of  the 
country  they  were  leaving.*  That  was  Greek,  but  with  defer- 
ence I  think  it  was  neither  Puritan  nor  Pilgrim.  They  in- 
tended to  leave  England  behind  them.  What  of  Stuart  or  of 
Tudor  or  of  bishops  and  archbishops  did  Standish  and  Win- 
slow,  or  Dudley  or  Cotton  desire  to  bring  to  the  wilderness  ? 
It  was  the  brooding  revolution,  it  was  the  soul  of  Cromwell 
that  came  with  them.  Avoiding  the  intermediate  processes 
they  proposed  to  make  the  perfected  results  of  the  revolution 
the  starting-point  for  New  England.  So  much  was  common 
to  them  all.  But  with  the  Puritan  influx  of  1630  came  also  a 
freight  of  old-time  tradition  and  personal  and  class  ambition 

'  Parkman,  Frontenac,  283,  295.  '  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  p.  368. 

*  Doyle,  Puritan  Colonics,  vol.  i.,  p.  loi. 


BOB 


-■    ■'•■■  -■- 


24 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


\    :       I 
I       I 


that  was  pregnant  with  mischief  and  fatal  to  the  peace  of 
Massachusetts.  With  tlie  very  first  movement  there  was 
borne  in  an  oligarchical  spirit  that  gave  the  colony  no  rest. 
It  was  civil  and  it  was  clerical.  The  leading  men  came,  with 
the  idea  of  establishing  rank  and  class  distinction  and  pre- 
rogative." There  were  to  be  gentlemen  and  noblemen  and 
the  commoners  and  the  clergy.  It  is  incontestible  that  at  the 
beginning  hostility  to  democracy  governed  the  purposes  of 
the  dominant  men,  civil  and  clerical.  In  their  interest  the 
limitation  of  the  capacity  to  hold  office  or  to  vote  in  elections 
to  the  membership  of  the  churches  disfranchised  the  very 
great  majority  of  the  people  from  the  outset.  In  1676  five- 
sixths  of  the  people  remained  outside  the  church  and  there- 
fore disfranchised."  It  is  a  marvel  how  the  destruction  of  the 
hierarchy  has  resulted  in  the  exaltation  of  the  individual 
priest  in  his  congregation.  The  men  of  better  descent, 
wealth,  and  influence  determined  to  establish  by  law  in  Mas- 
sachusetts some  privileged  class.  What  has  been  happily 
called  the  "  Brahminism  "  and  the  "  Brahmin  caste  "  of  New 
England  stands  on  a  very  different  basis.'  When  confronted 
by  the  antagonism  of  the  popular  mass  they  appealed  to  the 
arbitrament  of  the  ministers  or  the  elders,  and  the  decision 
never  failed  to  support  them.  Nothing  of  this  was  in  the 
little  Plymouth  state  ;  but  this  old-world  freight  of  social 
tradition  and  habit  was  borne  into  and  deposited  in  the  midst 
of  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  The  stream  of  demo- 
cratic principles,  to  which  the  great  majority  was  loyal,  and 
which  was  reinforced  by  the  example  and  influence  of  Plym- 
outh, rose  round  and  against  this  alien  mass  and  finally  en- 
gulfed it.  From  1629  to  1690  the  struggle  with  it  was  unre- 
mitted. This  foreign  element  is  the  source  of  all  the  indis- 
criminate reproach  which  has  been  heaped  upon  the  Puritans. 
It  was  like  the  plunder  of  Jericho  in  Joshua's  army.  There 
could  be  no  prosperity  till  it  was  out  and  the  men  were  dead. 
All  colonial  New  Kngland  has  had  to  bear  the  stigma  of  prin- 


f;: 


'  Doyle,  Pur.  Col.,  vol.  i. ,  pp.  104,  105  ;  Johnston,  Connecticut,  pp.  64,  67. 

*  Johnston,  Connecticut,  p.  66. 

2  Holmes,  Elsie  Vcnncr,  vol.  i.,  p.  i ;  20  Brownson's  Quar.  Rev.,  421. 


I;       r 


t. 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


25 


eace  of 
ire  was 
no  rest, 
le,  with 
nd  pre- 
len  and 
,t  at  the 
)oses  of 
rest  the 
lections 
he  very 
J76  five- 
d  there- 
in of  the 
dividual 
descent, 
in  Mas- 
happily 
of  New 
n  fronted 
:d  to  the 
decision 
,s  in  the 
3f  social 
he  midst 
)f  demo- 
•yal,  and 
of  Plym- 
nally  en- 
vas  unre- 
he  indis- 
Puritans. 
.     There 
ere  dead, 
a  of  prin- 

1.  64,  67. 
421. 


ciples  it  repudiated  and  finally  cast  out.  There  is  a  strenuous 
effort  constantly  made  to  defend  New  England  against  charges 
of  social  and  church  tyranny  and  persecution.  There  is  no 
burden  on  New  England  to  defend  herself  at  all.  These 
things  were  never  among  her  principles.  They  were  local  to 
Massachusetts  Bay.  They  were  not  developed  in  Plymouth 
nor  in  Connecticut.  They  were  the  self-assertion  of  a  foreign 
and  extraneous  element ;  of  a  parasite  that  fastened  upon  the 
state  till  it  was  thrown  off.  It  was  as  hostile,  and  as  incom- 
patible with  the  genuine  spirit  of  the  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  col- 
onization, as  the  schemes  and  policy  of  Frontenac  and  La  Salle 
would  have  been.  No  more  unique  figures  loom  out  of  the 
colonial  past  than  those  of  the  gloomy  fanatic  John  Norton 
and  the  savage  inquisitor  John  Endicott.  Their  pitiless  souls, 
regaled  by  the  incense  of  blood  and  torment,  grow  more  re- 
pulsive as  they  recede  in  time.  But  Endicott  and  Norton, 
and  Dudley  and  Wilson,  do  not  represent  the  original  spirit 
or  the  permanent  influence  of  the  Puritan  colony  nor  its  his- 
torical contribution  to  the  future.  They  belong  to  an  alien 
element  that  came  on  the  ships  as  a  stowaway,  and  those 
who  overthrew  this  monster  of  their  time  are  the  exponents 
of  New  England,  which  was  substantially  homogeneous  after- 
ward, but  not  before.  When  we  speak  of  the  Puritan  we 
should  think  of  him  as  he  stood,  less  Endicott  and  less  Norton 
and  Dudley ;  speak  of  him  as  he  stood  by  the  side  and  with 
the  sympathy  of  Miles  Standish,  who  was  no  narrow  church- 
man, not  even  a  church-member.  The  annals  of  Massachu- 
setts would  be  vastly  fewer  than  they  are  if  there  were  taken 
from  them  all  that  pertains  to  the  struggle  to  get  rid  of  that 
unrepublican  freight  of  individual  rank,  of  class  distinction, 
of  clerical  abuse  of  position  and  influence,  and  scheming  for 
dominion  in  political  affairs  ;  just  as  the  annals  of  the  re- 
public would  be  less  if  the  long  struggle  to  throw  out  the  unr 
republican  element  of  slave  tyranny  had  never  arisen  to  be 
narrated.  The  long  struggle  with  slavery  was  an  episode, 
an  incidental  controversy.  It  was  but  a  clearing  of  the  deck 
that  the  republic  might  proceed  upon  her  career  to  work  out 
her  contribution    to   universal  history.     In  like   manner   all 


■iiilMiiitetia 


26 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


New  England  had  to  wait  until  Massachusetts  had  freed  her- 
self from  her  incubus  and  brought  herself  back  to  the  original 
starting-point  of  Plymouth  and  Connecticut,  so  that  all  might 
move  on  together. 

In  Massachusetts  the  disfranchised  majority,  which  repre- 
sented the  opposition,  had  at  its  side  the  steady  reinforce- 
ment of  the  sentiment  and  opinion,  and  of  the  consistent 
example  and  tranquil  prosperity  of  the  Plymouth  community. 
Without  the  example  of  Plymouth's  prosperity  the  Dor- 
chester Adventurers  would  never  have  developed  the  colony 
of  Massachusetts  Bay,  and  without  the  example  of  its  steady 
and  consistent  administration  of  civil  affairs  the  social  and 
political  character  of  Massachusetts  might  have  differed 
widely  from  the  actual  result.  The  Pilgrims  and  Puritans 
withdrew  themselves  from  England  to  America  in  advance  of 
the  storm  of  the  revolution,  and  the  colony  of  Connecticut 
had  its  origin  in  a  similar  movement  of  protest  and  secession 
from  the  alien  principles  and  narrow  dominance  of  Endicott 
and  his  party.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  nature  of  the 
divergence  that  caused  the  complete  secession  of  the  three 
corporate  towns  of  Watertown,  Newtown,  and  Dorchester, 
under  the  leadership  of  Hooker,  and  their  withdrawal  to  Con- 
necticut. Perhaps  they  felt  it  easier  to  take  to  the  wilderness 
again  than  to  remain  in  the  midst  of  an  unanticipated  and  un- 
wholesome contention  for  the  rectification  of  Massachusetts. 
But  the  movement  under  Hooker  was  upon  the  same  plane 
as  that  of  the  Mayflower.  In  both,  men  bent  their  thought 
to  the  elenlentary  principles  of  society.  They  studied  the 
application  of  these  to  practical  administration.  They  framed 
a  scheme  of  social  order,  to  be  upheld  by  the  normal  action 
of  every  individual,  each  in  his  place,  from  the  bottom  of 
the  state  to  the  top.  The  men  most  reverent  to  God,  and 
the  most  scriptural-minded,  discovered  that  the  antique  po- 
litical principle  of  the  pagan  states  of  Greece  and  Rome— 
the  sovereignty  within  the  state,  the  Delphian  rhetra  to 
Lycurgus  :  "  Let  the  power  rest  with  the  people,"  the  lib- 
erty of  the  individual  citizen — were  less  atheistic  and  more 
elevating  than  the  theocratic  principle  that  put  the  symbol  of 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


27 


ecclesiastical  supremacy  above  the  arms  of  the  king  in  the 
forests  of  the  Hurons  and  the  Ottawas.  But  the  manner  in 
which  these  men,  without  any  close  example,  made  it  the 
vital  principle  of  all  organized  society,  and  ordered  upon  it 
their  town,  their  church,  and  their  state,  and  passed  it  on  to 
ripen  into  the  formula  of  "  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people  and  for  the  people,"  is  one  of  those  wonderful  things 
that,  occurring  in  history,  seem  the  result  of  some  extra- 
human  inspiration.  They  found  out  such  modes  of  giving  it 
effect  as  have  shown  that  the  individual  freedom  of  small 
democracies,  and  the  patriotism  of  small  independent  com- 
munities can  be  securely  expanded  upon  the  broadest  planes 
of  nationa'l  and  federal  life. 

During  all  the  time  of  the  Augean  cleansing  in  Massa- 
chusetts the  principles  of  the  Plymouth  colony  were  repre- 
sented and  maintained  by  Connecticut.  All  the  distinctive 
principles  of  the  first  constitution  of  Connecticut  were  ex- 
pressly or  by  necessary  implication  in  the  constitution  of 
the  Mayflower.  The  overshadowing  and  final  absorption  of 
Plymouth  left  them  to  the  leadership  and  maintenance  of 
Connecticut. 

The  little  municipality  known  as  the  New  England  town 
developed  itself  almost  as  a  matter  of  course  in  Plymouth  and 
in  Massachusetts.  It  cannot  be  necessary  to  explore  the 
obscure  tun  of  the  German  forests  for  its  original  suggestion. 
The  municipal  citizenship  of  the  Italian  cities  survived  the 
wreck  of  tne  empire  and  the  succeeding  centuries  of  intel- 
lectual imprisonment.  The  idea  of  corporate  political  organ- 
ization with  election  of  representatives  became  thoroughly 
ingrained  in  the  English  mind.  The  conception  was  im- 
ported from  the  civil  law.  When  it  became  necessary  in  an 
isolated  community  of  slender  numbers  to  frame  some  mu- 
nicipal society,  the  form,  cast  in  the  mould  of  the  English 
mind,  would  be  sure  to  take  on  some  such  outline.  These 
towns  are  found  wherever  New  England  emigration  has  gone. 
When  one  sees  how  the  local  citizenship  of  Italian  cities  sur- 
vived into  the  renaissance  of  thought  and  civic  life,  he  may 
well  believe  that  these  minute  political  organizations  on  their 


,..^itf.>>,ai;a«w« 


liDiliiiiar 


28        Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 

basis  of  popular  sovereignty,  these  social  and  political  mole- 
cules will  be  henceforth  absolutely  indestructible.  If  so,  then, 
as  a  security  for  the  free  conditions  under  which  men  may 
best  develop,  they  are  a  priceless  contribution  to  the  chain  of 
universal  history. 

Wherever  subsequent  migration  carried  the  people  of 
Connecticut,  there  went  this  form  of  the  New  England  town. 
In  Connecticut  the  towns  created  the  state  and  became  the 
source  from  which  the  state  derived  its  powers.'  This  was 
also  true  in  Vermont,  which  v/as  the  immediate  offspring  of 
Connecticut,  as  Connecticut  was  of  Massachusetts,  and  at  a 
later  period  has  surpassed  Connecticut  irk  the  reinforcement 
of  these  primal  principles.  The  towns  organized  tlie  govern- 
ment of  Vermont,"  which  separately  declared  its  own  indepen- 
dence of  Great  Britain,  and  erected  itself  into  a  free  and  in- 
dependent state,  and  so  maintained  itself  for  nearly  fifteen 
years,  at  first  under  the  name  of  New  Connecticut.  This 
constitution  of  the  state  by  the  towns  furnished  the  type  and 
the  principle  of  organization  of  the  Federal  Union.  Wher- 
ever this  polity  was  extended,  there  went  hand  in  hand  with 
it  the  cause  of  secular  education.  Taken  for  all  in  all,  the 
movement  of  New  England  colonization  was  one  of  such  in- 
tellectual and  moral  dignity  as  makes  all  the  other  colonizing 
movements  of  antiquity  or  of  our  race  commonplace  and 
mean.  Before  dwellings  or  subsistence  had  been  adequately 
provided,  first  in  Massachusetts  and  afterward  in  Connecticut, 
public  and  private  benefaction  laid  the  foundations  of  the  two 
great  universities  of  New  England ;  and  immediately  upon 
that  basis  was  founded  the  common  school,  and  it  is  nobly 
said  that  neither  poverty  nor  social  caste  has  ever  in  New 
England  barred"  the  road  to  education  or  to  public  honor,  nor 
has  ignorance  ever  been  an  excuse  for  personal  degradation 
or  for  crime.' 

The  object  of  the  New  England  colonists  was  not  to  ex- 
tend dominion  for  England,  but  to  establish  their  own  state. 
The   Puritans  had  been  sixty  years  on  the  coast  when  the 

'  Johnston,  Connecticut,  p.  62.  '  Vermont  State  Papers,  pp.  65-73,  79. 

»  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England. 


'* 


Fronteuac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


29 


-73.  79- 


portentous  comet  of  1680,  so  ominous  to  Increase  Mather  at 
Boston,  was  watched  by  La  Salle  on  the  Illinois  River  on  his 
return  from  the  Mississippi.  The  vigilance  and  enterprise  of 
the  French  had  passed  up  the  Lakes  and  down  to  the  Gulf, 
and  had  prepared  to  check  the  English  colonists  at  the  gate 
of  the  Mohawk  and  at  the  head  of  the  Ohio,  while  they  were 
still  confined  to  their  settlements  along  the  coast  and  had  not 
crossed  the  Apallachian  chain.  They  devoted  themselves 
not  to  expansion  but  to  establishment,  and  the  confirmation 
of  their  security.  But  there  v»'as  a  vigor  in  the  action  by 
which  threatening  Indian  tribes  were  suppressed  that  augured 
power  in  the  future.  It  was  a  profound  and  lasting  quiet 
that  followed  the  overthrow  of  the  Pequots.  Near  Fort 
Miami  La  Salle  found  some  warriors  of  King  Philip  who  had 
fled  from  the  Puritan  vengeance,  and  who  joined  his  party. 
It  must  have  been  a  stunning  blow  that  sent  those  savages 
whirling  through  the  wilderness,  till  they  brought  up  dazed 
and  tamed  near  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan.  It  seems  un- 
exampled, except  by  the  flight  of  that  fragment  of  people 
found  oil  the  coast  of  Africa,  near  the  columns  of  Hercules, 
who  claimed  to  be  Canaanites,  expelled  by  the  assaults  of 
Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun. 

Unqualified  laudation  bears  always  with  itself  the  evi- 
dence of  ill-digested  facts  and  of  premature  judgment;  and 
perhaps  an  unwarranted  glamour  has  been  thrown  over  the 
subject  of  schools  and  of  secular  learning  in  the  colonial  days. 
But  the  conception  of  it  as  a  vital  part  of  the  civic  policy,  as 
a  feature  of  the  civil  state,  was  never  clouded  for  an  instant. 
Always  it  remains  true,  that  wherever  the  genuine  influence 
of  New  England  has  gone  there  you  find  the  widest  tolerance 
of  opinion,  and  that  the  monsters  of  superstition  are  one 
after  another  slain  by  the  steady  and  free  development  of 
education.  The  intellectual  fibres  of  all  the  world,  two  cen- 
turies and  a  half  ago,  were  puckered  and  strained  by  the 
astringent  properties  of  theological  speculation,  and  an  in- 
heritance of  theological  dogma.  To  expect  to  find  a  man 
of  the  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  centuries  standing  upon 
the  higher  intellectual  plane  of  some  more  emancipated  men 


30        Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Nortlnvest. 


I 

If 


'A 


of  the  nineteenth,  and  surveying  their  wider  horizon,  is  a 
delusion,  and  to  some  extent  involves  a  snare.  The  extent 
to  which  tlie  system  of  teaching,  of  conferring  actual  in- 
formation and  accurate  knowledge  of  particular  subjects, 
was  carried  by  the  common  schools  among  the  farming 
people  and  the  ordinary  classes,  and  also  the  real  extent  of 
what  was  called  "  learning"  among  physicians  and  clergymen 
and  the  college  men,  is  usually  greatly  exaggerated,  and  from 
a  modern  point  of  view  it  cannot  seem  very  great.  It  was 
narrow.  It  was  limited  by  the  resources  and  habits  of 
thought  that  belonged  to  the  times.  Grammar,  mathematics, 
and  geography  were  not  carried  very  far.  There  was  more 
of  literature,  though  books  were  few,  and  of  theology  there 
was  more  than  enough.  There  was  no  skill  of  engineering  to 
build  bridges,  and  but  little  of  the  natural  sciences — chemis- 
try, anatomy,  physiology — and  these  conditions  fettered  the 
study  of  clergymen  and  of  physicians.  But  the  study  of  the 
civil  and  common  law,  of  history  and  of  the  regulations  of 
society  and  government  were  opened  to  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  thought,  and  the  intellect  of  men  was  trained  on 
these  in. public  affairs  as  well  as  on  the  abstruse  questions  of 
metaphysics  and  theology.  With  voting  went  debating  in 
that  school  of  statecraft  the  town-meeting,  and  discussion 
of  all  the  civil  polity  of  the  state.  But  limited  and  narrow  as 
the  learning  taught  in  the  schools  of  New  England  may  now 
be  thought  to  have  been,  the  contrast  between  the  relative 
estimates  in  New  England  and  elsewhere  of  its  importance, 
and  between  its  abundance  and  the  destitution  of  the  rest  of 
the  country,  represented  an  immeasurable  abyss.  It  is  this 
difference  by  contrast,  not  the  absolute  extent  of  learning  in 
New  England,  which  made  her  people  and  her  policy  so  con- 
spicuous in  this  regard.  Compared,  however,  with  the  other 
colonies  the  extent  of  it  was  prodigious,  and,  what  is  more 
important,  it  was  universally  diffused.  Public  sentiment 
everywhere  demanded  its  diffusion  as  the  first  condition  of 
society,  and  to  the  utmost  extent  that  the  slender  resources 
of  the  times  and  the  country  would  allow.  It  quickened  and 
enlightened  mental.activity  everywhere.     It  gave  intelligence 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Stattdish  in  the  Northwest.         31 

to  guide  and  direct  the  force  of  individuals  and  communities. 
It  furnished  the  elements  of  reason  and  judgment  to  opinions. 
That  it  should  be  adequate  to  overcome  all  narrowness  and 
bigotry  was  not  to  be  expected.  That  it  should  cut  men 
abruptly  away  from  their  intellectual  inheritance  of  thought, 
or  lift  them  out  of  their  inevitable  environment,  was  of  course 
impossible.  But  many  things  are  charged  to  narrowness  and 
to  bigotry,  which  had  their  foundation  in  the  most  compre- 
hensive ideas  of  social  and  political  emancipation.  It  may  be 
convenient  enough  for  the  adherents  of  various  forms  of  ec- 
clesiastical organization  to  attribute  the  resistance  of  New 
England  to  Episcopacy  and  Presbyterianism,  as  times  then 
were,  to  bigotry,  but  it  is  false.  It  was  liberality  and  liberty, 
not  bigotry  or  narrowness.  It  was  the  protest  against  being 
narrowed.  The  Church  of  England  and  the  Scotch  Presby- 
tery represented  to  them  the  very  abomination  of  ecclesia§ti- 
cism,  from  which  they  had  recoiled  and  fled.  They  wanted 
no  ecclesiastical  organization  to  confuse  loyalty  to  the  organi- 
zation with  fidelity  to  religion,  or  to  superintend  their  thought 
upon  any  subject  or  dominate  their  modes  of  public  educa- 
tion. They  were  unable  to  point  to  any  time  or  country  in 
which  the  great  mass  of  the  population  were  improved  in 
their  intellectual  and  political  condition  by  the  control  or  in- 
fluence of  any  ecclesiastical  system  whatever. 

At  all  times  a  somewhat  equivocal  policy  disguised  the 
real  determination  of  all  the  colonists  in  the  matter  of  abso- 
lute independence  both  of  the  king  and  the  ecclesiastical 
power  of  England.  In  their  own  hearts  the  settlers  carried  a 
habitual  sentiment  of  independence,  which  was  at  variance 
sometimes  with  their  immediate  policy  and  with  the  for- 
mal declarations  of  their  public  documents.  A  tendency  to 
assume  an  independent  sovereignty  was  always  active  in  New 
England  from  the  hour  the  Mayflower  compact  was  signed. 
It  asse  ted  itself  strongly  in  the  league  of  the  four  colonies, 
and  was  continually  visible  in  the  conduct  of  public  affairs. 
A  war  of  independence  was  inevitable  from  the  first  political 
act  of  the  Pilgrims.  It  was  sure  to  come.  John  Adams  said  : 
"  The  authority  of  Parliament  was  never  generally  acknowl- 


32 


FroHtenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


; 


edged  in  America."  Burdette  wrote  to  Laud  in  1637,  "  The 
colonists  ainnt  not  at  new  discipline,  but  at  sovereignty."  An 
intelligent  people,  bred  to  a  degree  of  liberty  elsewhere  un- 
known, trained  by  peril  and  hardship  to  self-reliance  and  the 
use  of  arms,  were  little  likely  ever  to  be  tamed  again  to 
subjection  to  a  distasteful  and  distant  power.  To  guard 
against  this  tendency,  which  would  be  strengthened  by  the 
growth  of  the  colonies  into  the  Northwest  regions,  still  more 
remote,  England  proposed  to  close  that  vast  domain  against 
population,  and  impeded  and  prohibited  the  settlement  of 
the  Northwest.  At  one  time  it  was  considered,  with  the 
same  end  in  view,  whether  Canada  should  not  be  restored  to 
the  French  dominion  ;  and  finally,  by  the  Quebec  Act  in 
1774,  on  the  basis  chiefly  of  the  French  settlement  and  occu- 
pation in  Illinois,  it  was  intended  to  permanently  detach  the 
Northwest  from  the  Shore  Colonies  and  link  it  with  Canada, 
so  that  its  permanent  affiliations  should  be  with  the  St.  Law- 
rence basin  and  not  with  the  Atlantic  slope.  Only  the  Rev- 
olution broke  this  purpose.  The  Northwest  was  conquered 
from  England  and  the  savages,  as  it  had  been  from  France  and 
the  savages.  Such  was  the  stake  of  the  Northwest  in  the 
Revolution.  Nevertheless  there  was  little  association  and 
less  affiliation  between  New  England  and  the  other  English 
colonies  before  the  events  leading  to  the  Revolution  brought 
them  into  combination.  "  Till  the  time  of  the  Boston  Port 
Bill,"  says  Palfrey,  "Massachusetts  and  Virginia,  the  two 
principal  English  colonies,  had  with  each  other  scarcely  more 
relations  of  acquaintance,  business,  mutual  influence,  or  com- 
mon action,  than  either  of  them  had  with  Jamaica  or  Que- 
bec." But  from  the  moment  their  action  in  concert  began, 
the  principles  of  the  Plymouth  constitution  were  asserted  and 
became  dominant.  The  Northwest  territory  grew  out  of  a 
request  of  Congress  that  States  would  cede  their  western  lands 
to  the  government  to  aid  a  fund  for  the  payment  of  the  public 
debt ;  and  in  1787  Congress  passed  an  ordinance  for  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  inhabitants  of  that  territory.  By  the  influence 
of  New  England,  through  this  unexampled  .secondary  consti- 
tution, the  territory  of  the   Northwest  steadily  unified  itself 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.        33 

and  became  as  distinct  a  historical  unit  within  the  republic 
as  New  England  was  among  the  colonies.  The  first  provision 
of  the  Ordinance  of  1787  established  entire  religious  freedom  ; 
lis  second,  those  "just  and  equal"  principles  which  are  usu- 
ally inserted  in  bills  of  rights ;  the  third  provided  for  the 
management  and  support  of  schools  ;  and  the  sixth,  that  there 
should  be  no  slavery — nothing  but  freedom — within  the 
boundaries  of  the  vast  territory  which  is  now  Ohio,  Indiana, 
Michigan,  Wisconsin,  and  Illinois.  This  was  made  by  New 
England  men  a  condition  upon  which  alone  they  stood  ready 
to  purchase  five  million  acres  of  this  public  domain.'  No  ar- 
gument or  exposition  can  make  more  obvious  the  Mayflower 
character  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  and  it  is  no  empty  figure 
of  rhetoric  to  say  that  when  it  went  into  force  Frontenac  was 
supplanted,  and  Miles  Standish,  the  captain  of  the  Pilgrinss, 
had  set  his  feet  in  victory  upon  the  territory  of  the  North- 
west. 

By  one  other  important  avenue  the  New  England  com- 
monwealths have  entered  upon  the  Northwest.  These  col- 
onists were  Englishmen.  The  entire  period  of  their  emigra- 
tion, commencing  in  1620,  hardly  extended  forty  years.  A 
singular  sense  of  satisfaction  in  their  ethnic  identity,  and  a 
corresponding  sharp  dislike  of  foreigners  was  always  aggres- 
sively active.  By  laws  and  social  sentiment  and  the  coldest 
inhospitality  they  discouraged  their  coming  even  as  servants. 
They  hated  Irish  and  Frenchmen  and  prelacy  under  every 
form  uncompromisingly,  and  were  well  content  that  Dutch- 
men should  keep  as  far  away  as  they  would.  Naturalization 
was  made  difficult  and  inconvenient.  Their  great  pride  ot 
race  grew  with  inherited  enmity  and  suspicion  under  the  in- 
fluence of  their  controversies.  While  the  glories  of  England 
were  theirs  also,  the  dislike  of  foreigners  came  to  include  her 
nevertheless,  as  soon  as  the  spirit  of  liberty  and  the  purpose 
of  independence  defined  itself  clearly  in  an  issue  of  arms. 
At  the  close  of  the  Revolution  and  at  the  opening  of  this 
century,  and  long  afterward,  the  people  of  New  England  re- 
mained, perhaps,  the  purest  part  of  the  English  race,  multi- 

1  William  F.  Poole,  North  Am.  Rev.,  April,  1876,  Ordinance  of  1787. 
3 


IJWW'WJX'!?!????''?'''''"'''''*'"'""™ 


'34 


Froutenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northivest. 


plying  in  the  close  seclusion  of  their  own  borders,  and  having 
little  communication  with  the  outside  world.  This  character- 
istic of  the  New  England  people,  made  conspicuous  among 
the  other  colonies,  was  a  principal  cause  there  of  a  biltcniess 
of  sentiment  and  political  angularity  toward  them  that  fre- 
quently found  more  or  less  definite  expression.'  The  move- 
ments of  this  people  were  confined,  until  a  very  modern 
period,  entirely  within  their  own  borders  ;  but  of  one  part  of 
this  territory  there  is  a  peculiar  record.  The  native  Algon- 
quin population,  never  dense,  was  disposed  along  the  sea- 
coast,  with  an  occasional  interior  tribe  not  far  from  the  sea. 
Beyond  the  Hudson  lay  the  permanent  abode  of  the  Mo- 
hawks and  their  allied  tribes,  but  Western  Massachusetts  and 
Vermont,  with  Northern  New  Hampshire,  appear  to  have 
been  void  of  any  human  occupation.  Moreover,  no  indica- 
tions suggest  the  presence  there,  as  in  some  other  regions, 
of  any  more  ancient  people.  No  mounds,  no  ancient  groves, 
no  fragments  of  antique  pottery  or  primitive  weapons  speak 
of  primitive  races.  *'  It  is  a  long  way,"  it  is  said,  "  from  a 
cromlech  to  Westminster  Abbey,"  but  there  are  no  more 
traces  of  cromlechs  than  of  cathedrals.  A  few  arrow-heads, 
and  relics  that  signify  the  occasional  passing  of  savages,  out 
for  hunting  or  for  war,  are  the  only  things  that  check  the 
bound  of  the  imagination  to  the  belief  that  in  all  this  vast 

'  Lodge,  Eng.  CoU,  407,  474.  Palfrey,  Hist,  of  New  Eng.,  Preface. 
"  The  next  wish  of  this  traveller  will  be  to  know  whence  came  all  these  peo- 
ple ?  They  are  a  mixture  of  English,  Scotch,  Irish,  French,  Dutch,  Germans, 
and  Swedes.  From  this  promiscuous  breed  that  race  now  called  Americans  has 
arisen.  The  eastern  provinces  must  indeed  be  excepted  as  being  the  unmixed  de- 
scendants of  Englishmen.  I  have  heard  many  wish  they  had  been  more  inter- 
mixed also ;  for  my  part,  I  am  no  wisher,  and  /  think  it  much  better  as  it  has  hap- 
pened. They  exhibit  a  most  conspicuous  figure  in  this  great  and  variegated 
picture  ;  they,  too,  enter  for  a  great  share  in  the  pleasing  perspective  displayed  in 
these  thirteen  provinces.  I  know  it  is  fashionable  to  reflect  on  them,  but  I  respect 
them  for  what  they  have  done ;  for  the  accuracy  and  wisdom  with  which  they 
have  settled  their  territory ;  for  the  decency  of  their  manners ;  for  their  early  love 
of  letters  ;  their  ancient  college,  the  first  in  this  hemisphere ;  for  their  industry ; 
which  to  me  who  am  but  a  farmer,  is  the  criterion  of  everything.  "—Crevecceur, 
The  American  Farmer,  p.  48. 

See  also  Travels  through  the  United  States,  by  the  Duke  de  la  Rochefoucault- 
Liancourt,  ii.,  p.  214.    London  ed.,  1799. 


m 


i:j,-.ii^ii*ii*i**ri 


FroHtenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northxvcst. 


35 


region  of  forest  and  streams  no  human  being  ever  had  abode 
from  the  beginning  of  time  till  it  was  occupied  by  the  people 
of  Connecticut.  liut  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  a  shadow 
of  unutterable  honor  held  back  the  multitude  of  brave  and 
enterprising  colonists  who  gathered  at  the  very  bord'  r  of  the 
fated  domain.  Year  after  year  the  forest  fruits  fell  unheeded 
and  the  foliage  decked  the  earth  in  colors  of  gold  and  red 
that  matched  the  imperial  splendor  of  cathedral  transepts. 
Through  successive  seasons  the  streams  bounded  in  the  sun 
and  froze  into  the  silence  of  death,  and  the  fertile  lands  that 
might  have  blossomed  with  harvests  lay  dull  and  hopeless 
under  the  stars  and  the  sun  ;  for  over  them  brooded  the 
terror  that  was  the  ally  of  the  old  lion,  Frontenac,  and  of  his 
successors  who  held  sway  at  Quebec.  In  all  the  wars  of- 
France  and  England  the  Amen  an  colonies  had  a  frightful 
participation.     The    Indian    allic  the  Canadian   French 

were  hurled  not  only  upon  the  Ir  ois  tribes  that  lay  within 
the  gateway  of  the  continent  forni^u  by  the  Mohawk  valley, 
but  upon  the  settlements  of  New  England.  The  atroci- 
ties of  Deerfield  and  Haverhill  overawed  the  disposition 
to  settle  in  undefended  places  ;  and  to  invade  the  region 
where  these  murderous  bands  were  prowling  was  to  enter 
into  the  shadow  of  inevitable  destruction.  The  customary 
route  of  Indian  foray  through  the  wilderness  was  to  follow  the 
frozen  water  courses,  with  such  portages  as  were  necessary 
to  pass  from  one  to  another.  The  Canadian  savages  came 
by  Lake  Champlain  to  streams  entering  it  from  the  East, 
and  thence  crossed  over  to  the  Connecticut ;  or  from  Lake 
George  by  the  portage  to  the  Hudson,  and  thence  up  the 
Hoosac  to  its  head-waters,  and  over  the  mountains  to  the 
Deerfield  River.  The  old  Indian  trail  runs  there  almost  ex- 
actly over  the  great  railway  tunnel.  By  whichever  route, 
the  war  parties  came  at  last  upon  the  settlements  through  the 
narrow  gateways  of  Southern  Vermont,  and  at  any  hour  their 
plumed  and  painted  shapes  might  emerge  from  the  forest. 
Such  a  terror  brooded  over  this  region  till  the  final  conquest 
of  Canada  in  1760 ;  but  in  the  meanwhile  the  Taghconic  val- 
ley of  Western  Vermont  and  of  Western  Massachusetts  was 


36 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


like  the  valley  of  Esdraelon,  the  passage-way  of  armies.  The 
colonial  soldiers  that  engaged  in  the  French  and  Indian 
wars  about  Lake  Champlain  and  Lake  George  passed  forth 
and  back  through  this  valley,  the  home  c:"':erward  of  Ethan 
Allen  and  of  Warner,  and  came  to  know  the  most  fruitful 
part  of  New  England  ;  and  one  of  them  left  the  memorial  of 
his  passage  in  the  original  foundation  of  Williams  College. 
As  soon  as  it  ceased  to  be  swept  by  war  parties  of  Canadian 
savages  the  people  of  Connecticut  filled  it  with  their  populous 
and  prosperous  settlements.'  I  have  sketched  and  dwelt  upon 
this  peculiar,  and  not  too  familiar,  course  of  New  England 
settlement  because  of  the  enormous  proportional  part  borne 
by  the  people  of  this  region,  in  the  present  century,  in-  the 
emigration  from  New  England  to  the  territory  of  the  North- 
west. Like  theii  predecessors  of  Plymouth  and  Connecticut, 
individual  freedom  was  their  civil  corner-stone  ;  the  church 
with  them  hardly  preceded  the  school ;  and  none  but  a  free- 
man ever  breathed  in  the  air  of  Vermont.' 

There  was  almost  no  emigration  from  New  England  prior  to 
the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  nor  was  it  considerable 
till  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  But  in  1840  about 
half  a  million  people  born  there  were  living  in  other  States. 
Forty  years  later  nothing  was  more  conspicuous  than  the 
impress  of  New  England  upon  the  States  of  the  old  North- 
west through  the  presence  of  her  people.  In  proportion  to 
population,  by  far  the  largest  number  is  from  Vermont,  and 
the  least  from  New  Hampshire.  Of  the  native  Nev/  England 
population  in  the  Northwest,  in  1880,  three-fourths  were  from 
the  three  States  of  Massachusetts,  Vermont,  and  Connecticut; 
Vermont  contributing  about  three-fourths  as  many  as  Massa- 
chusetts, and  Connecticut  less  than  two-thirds  as  many  as 
Vermont.  The  part  this  emigration  has  borne  in  the  political 
and  social  development  of  the  Northwest,  in  which  the  rem- 
nants of  French  occupation  are  disappearing,  is  too  familiar  to 
be  made  the  subject  of  present  discussion. 

'  Thompson,  History  of  Vermont,  Part  2,  p.  16 ;  Hall,  Early  History  of  Ver- 
mont, p.  4. 

*  Legislative  Act  of  October  30,  1786.  Selectmen  of  Windsor  vs.  Jacob,  2  Tyler 
Rep.,  194-199.     29  N.  E.  Reg.,  247.    Jennings,  Memorials  of  a  Century,  p.  336. 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.         37 

And  now,  if,  as  Socrates  said  to  Protagoras,  we  had  the 
result  standing  in  human  shape  before  us,  would  it  condemn 
and  deride  us,  or  could  the  Puritan  scholars  silence  that  by- 
demonstration  that  some  permanent  good  has  been  confirmed 
by  them  to  human  society  ?     If  this  shape  should  interrogate 
them,  they  could  say  that  under  their  principles  of  unfettered 
thought  and  education  there  have  been  developed  the  most 
elevating  and  hopeful  conditions  for  the  general  good  under 
which  man  ever  lived  ;  and  that  it  is  proven  that  any  eccle- 
siastical  or   political  institution  that   cannot  face  the  freest 
thought  and  widest  education  is  certainly  charged  with  mis- 
chief for  society.     But  the  most  sinister  and  shocking  thing 
in  the  world  is  that  horrid  sneer  which  the    satirists    have 
passed  down  the  generations  of  man,  at  the  infirmity  that  has 
sacrificed  to  the  silliest  vanities  and  most  selfish  ambitions 
every  guarantee  for  the  survival  or  growth  of  any  good.     It  is 
well  for  us  to  consider  in  what  subtle  ways  great  changes  come 
about.     It  is  a  fact  that  when  the  common  school  was  founded 
notwithstanding  the  clerical  tyranny  of  the  separate  minist>  .s 
there  was  no  ecclesiasticism  in  New  England.     There  was  re- 
ligion, absorbing  and  profound,  and  the  spirit  of  worship  and 
the  abuse  of  the  influence  of  the  individual  minister.     But 
there  was    no   ecclesiasticism.     There  was    no   organization 
framed  not  merely  to  administer  religion,  but  also  to  formu- 
late creeds  and  to  regulate  thought  by  discipline  and  its  own 
rules.     For  more  than  fifty  years  the  celebration  of  marriage 
was  permitted  to  none  but  the  civil  magistrates.     The  sects 
whose  tendencies  were  to   concentration  of  authority  and  to 
discipline  never  rooted  well,  but  found  a  cold  and  reluctant 
soil  in  New  England.     A  system  of  independent  churches 
conserved  among  the  people  the  purity  of  religious  faith  and 
simplicity  of  service,  and  equally  defended  the  independence 
of  the  mind.     There  was  no  organization  to  confuse  itself  and 
its  regulations  with  the  religion  it  represented,  and  inculcate 
an  absorbing  obligation  of  loyalty  to  the  organization  sim- 
ply.'    If  there  had  been,  the  principles  of  New  England  edu- 
cation would  have  been  different  from  what  they  were.     This 

'  Palfrey,  History  of  New  England,  pp.  298-408. 


38 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest. 


shows  under  v/hat  sunlight  our  educational  principles  and  the 
Ordinance  of  1787  were  born,  and  under  what  conditions  they 
may  be  stifled.  There  have  such  changes  come  about  in  forty 
years,  by  the  emigration  of  the  native  population  and  the  silent 
substitution  of  another,  that,  by  the  census  of  1880,  seventy- 
two  per  cent,  of  the  births  in  New  England  were  within  the 
inclosure  of  the  most  intolerant  ecclesiasticism  of  all  human 
history.  So  our  primal  and  basic  principles  may  be  insecure. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  that  gov- 
ernmental power  is  derived  from  the  people,  is  authoritatively 
declared  to  be  atheistical  and  unscriptural.  The  old  question 
of  supremacy  is  still  alive,  therefore,  and  doctrines  concerning 
the  right  and  expediency  of  property,  which  were  discussed 
by  Aristotle  and  Plato,  are  filling  all  industrial  communities 
with  controversies  between  labor  and  capital,  and  revolts 
against  accumulation  of  property.  It  may  be  that  great  mod- 
ifications are  yet  to  be  made  in  the  constitution  of  society, 
and  that  education  and  liberty  will  have  a  long  work  to  per- 
form in  dissipating  or  relieving  the  burdens  of  society  at  this 
point  on  the  world's  surface,  at  which  men  and  races  are  con- 
vening from  all  the  regions  of  the  earth. 

An  obscurity  equally  comprehensive  and  profound  vexes 
all  conceptions  of  the  future  of  the  commonwealth.  But  it  is 
an  ancient  teaching  that  "  immortal  night  is  called  the  nurse 
of  the  gods,"  and  out  of  the  perplexities  of  thought  well- 
founded  ideas  are  slowly  evolved.  We  may  believe  that  the 
little  towns,  with  their  citizenship  and  rights  of  election  and 
representation,  capable  of  assimilating  every  new  and  service- 
able element  that  may  be  developed,  will  be  indestructible 
germs  of  that  form  of  political  life  ;  that  they  will  survive  the 
wreck  of  successive  national  experiments  in  organizing  society 
and  changing  its  forms,  and  prove  a  permanent  contribution 
to  Universal  History.  The  products  of  a  historical  unit,  those 
concrete  results  which  are  to  be  carried  forward  in  making  up 
the  course  of  universal  history,  are  impersonal  to  the  last  de- 
gree. If  there  may  be  a  Philosophy  of  History,  its  indica- 
tions are  to  be  looked  for  in  them.  While  in  the  advanced 
condition   of  the   future   commonwealth,  ideas  far  differing 


Frontenac  and  Miles  Standish  in  the  Northwest.        39 

from  ours  upon  religion  and  morals  and  politics  and  social  ad- 
justment will  apparently  prevail,  we  may  expect,  if  the  race 
advances,  the  steady  confirmation  of  the  great  Pilgrim  and 
Puritan  principles,  which  rest  society  and  government  upon 
the  development  of  the  individual  citizen,  because  the  dis- 
placement of  Frontenac  was  a  surmounting  of  the  fleur-de-lys 
and  the  banners  of  France  not  merely  by  the  standards  of  the 
republic,  but  by  the  kingliness  of  intellectual  man. 


M»«iM4MM««>MMiKi|lH^  • 


